Many people want to build an app for various reasons. In this article we’ll give you a run down of how to build a fitness app in our system, including what are the best features to use in our system for your app! 

Before you can start building your app, you need to start with a home screen feature. The home screen feature is the first thing that users see when they open your app. Some of the most widely used home screen features are:

The Folder feature is the most used feature in our system. It helps you organize your app with the ability to house folders within other folders thus allowing you to quickly and easily decide on a layout for your app.

The Action Items Folder is similar to the regular folder in how it’s used to house the features of your app, but if you’re looking for something with a different look than any of the layout options of the regular Folder feature, then this may be the feature for you.

The Catalog & Promote Folder allows you to promote key entries in it by adding a badge next to an item and you have the option to send out a push notification when promoting an item. 

The Grid Layout Launcher feature allows you to display the other features in your app in a grid. While you have less layout options than the Folder feature, using a grid layout is a tried and true method for providing navigational options for your users.

Once you’ve decided on which feature you’re going to use as your app’s home screen you’ll need to create an instance of that feature and assign it as your app’s Home Screen. Here’s how to do this:

Step 1: Go to the Feature Marketplace

Step 2: Locate the Feature that you want to use

You can either scroll through all of the features available in the Marketplace, or search for the feature you want to use.

Step 3: Click On The Add (“+”) Button

Step 4: Give it a Title and click “Add” again

Once you have decided on the feature that you’d like to use as your home screen and have created an instance of it, here’s how to assign it as your home screen feature:

Step 1: Click on the Hamburger Menu at the right of the Feature Content Editor

Step 2: Select “Set As Home Plugin”

Now that you’ve assigned a feature as your Home Screen feature, you’ll need to build out your app using additional features found in our system so that your users can have a more complete app experience. Here’s some features in our system that we recommend you use:

As we mentioned earlier, Folders are a great way to help keep your app organized. With the ability to house folders within folders, we recommend that you use either the Folder, Action Item Folder, or Catalog & Promote Folder features to organize your app.
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You can use the Folder features to layout different areas of your app such as Workouts, Recipes, Nutritional Information, and Social Media links.

The main focus of a Fitness app is to provide your customers with workouts and nutritional recipes. There’s a number of features that you can use, some of the ones that we recommend are:

The Flashcards feature allows you to create flashcards in your app which you can use to show workout routines, daily or weekly challenges, or steps for recipes.

The Seminar & Lecture Notes feature was originally created for educational apps, but we’ve seen a number of Fitness apps use this feature to provide their users with workout routines and recipes that those users can bookmark and add their own personal notes to.

If you just have visual guides for your workouts or recipes, or if you want to show off previous and current client’s success stories, you can use the Image Gallery to showcase this content.

The Media Center Manual feature allows you to include multiple types of media in one feature. These can be anything from videos, podcasts, or workout music.

If you have an online blog with an RSS feed, you can use the Media Center RSS Feed feature to bring in the blog posts into your app.

Along with the Media Center Manual feature, you can use the YouTube and Vimeo features to bring your online videos into your app if you have accounts for those pages.

If your gym holds special events or classes throughout the year, you can use the Events Feed or Events Manual feature to bring these events into your app where your users can learn about these events and add them to their own personal calendars on their phones.

If you want to give users the ability to schedule meetings or training calls with you, you can use the Calendly or Youcanbook.me features if you have accounts with those services. If you have a scheduling system in another service, you can use the WebView feature to bring that into your app.

If you have a gym, or gyms, where you work out of, you can use the Places 2.0 feature to provide your customers with directions to your gym’s location(s).

If you have a staff working for you, or you have multiple trainers on your team, you can use the People feature to help your users get to know you and your team a bit more. You can set this up as a “Meet The Team” or “Meet Our Trainers” type of feature.

A great alternative to the People feature is the Contact Us feature which you can use as a way to provide your users with your contact information, as well as give them some information about who you are as a business.

With the Premium Social Wall you can give your users a way to reach out to you with questions or talk amongst themselves which can be a great way for them to stay encouraged during their fitness journey. 

If you would like to sell products in your app, we encourage you to use Shopify for your store, and our Shopify 2.0 feature to bring it into your app.

Along with these great features you can also showcase your social media pages with our social media features. You can use the Facebook feature to point your customers to your Facebook page. You can also use our Twitter feature to point your customers to your Twitter feed and our WebView feature to point your customers to your Instagram. You can also use the Folder feature as a “Social Media” folder to house all of these features within so that when your customers tap on that folder they’ll be brought to all of your social media features.

With the Share App feature you can give your users a way to share your app with their friends and family which is a great way to organically grow your user base!

For your most important features, we encourage you to add them to your app’s Side Menu as well for ease of access for your users. Here’s how you can make those features accessible in the Side Menu:

Step 1: Go To The Side Menu Page Found Under The Design Tab

On the left-hand side of the App Dashboard you’ll see a menu with a couple of options, the “App Compnents” tab being one of them. Click on that to expand it then click on “Side Menu” to access the Side Menu’s controls:

Step 2: Click On “Add Existing Feature” In the “Menu” Section Of The Side Menu Page

Clicking on “Add Existing Feature” will bring up a list of all of the features that you’ve built for your app. Select the feature that you want to add to the side menu by selecting the feature and clicking “Apply”.

This will add these features to your app’s Side Menu so that users can quickly and easily access them as they’re shopping in your app.

Along with selling products in your app, you can also make money from your app by either charging users to download it from the app stores, or offer in-app purchases and subscriptions. 

Charging users to download the app will mean that they will pay a one-time fee to download your app, while offering in-app purchases and subscriptions allows you to lock premium content behind a paywall. We highly recommend that you choose one option or the other, as Apple and Google can be extremely strict on apps that charge users to download them and include in app purchases or subscriptions.

 If you would like to learn more about how to set these up, we encourage you to check out our article on how to turn your app into a revenue stream.

Note: In order to take advantage of in-app purchases or subscriptions, you will need to be on our Professional or Enterprise level plans.

Congratulations! You know have all of the steps needed to build an app for your Fitness business! Still have questions? No problem! Reach out to us and we’d be happy to help!