How To Create an App Like Strava?
As they say, “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen.”, Strava has gained enormous popularity in the fitness industry in a very short time. From being the editor’s choice on the AppStore to being the number one app for a variety of purposes by a variety of authorities, this is a feat on its own for an app to achieve. People have a new grown love for fitness and activity tracker apps for the past few years, and they have become a daily chore for many.
Being healthy is the new in, and these apps let people directly compete with their friends and fitness enthusiasts all around the world. Strava has enabled a healthy competition between individuals interested in cycling, it lets users see others’ timing on a particular route and compete easily. Activity tracking apps can help users build their schedule and motivate them to work harder if the idea behind them works well.
What are Activity Tracker Apps?
The activity tracker apps are used to track the metrics of a sport that the user performs, it could be anything from swimming to simple walking. Activity trackers enable users to get exclusive insights which aren’t available otherwise, and many have built communities of like-minded people. Social integration has allowed people to compete with friends directly, and have motivated them to do better in the sports they choose. A myriad of devices that are capable of recording vitals has enabled activity tracking apps to be much more advanced than before.
What Makes Strava So Popular?
The mobile app and feature offerings have to be the top reason for Strava’s success, along with a flair for fitness amongst people. Strava is essentially a social network for fitness-oriented people, and lets you find friends through a variety of ways. Strava provides one of a kind interface and UI/UX, to let users enjoy tracking their workouts and comparing to their friends. Strava has opened up a connected world for fitness enthusiasts and helped them through their workouts in a lot of different ways.
Features to include in a fitness tracking app like Strava
Features to be included in an app like Strava has to be picked very carefully, as they could differentiate the app from succeeding or failing. Strava has picked their features very carefully, and as we said above, it may have very well contributed to the success of Strava we see today. Make sure you put in most efforts in market research to make a list of features that the users would like to see in your app and try to make the app as user-friendly as possible.
We would suggest you make the main choices first, your target audience and what would your platform serve as. Strava has targeted users on account of them wanting to compete with someone, and have created the app like a social fitness app. If you are planning the same we would be adding both features of Strava as well others they missed, which should be included in a fitness tracking app like Strava. Also, to ensure maximum usability, you need to make sure the app can connect and fetch data from various trackers.
1. GPS Tracking
For various sports that include long distances, GPS tracking could prove to be an essential feature for an activity tracker app. Strava features advanced GPS tracking which allows users to see their pathways, their speeds, time, and compare it to the rest of the world or their friends in real-time. The global positioning system also allows Strava to create trajectories within the app, and draw the specifics for the user on the map.
2. Tracking for Various Sports
While Strava too has limited itself to a few sports, you can plan ahead and include as many sports as you want to. While most leisure players wouldn’t want to know the depths, they could certainly use things like time active, and total calories burned etc. You can essentially track all the vitals during the workout and display them to the user or could use some advanced analytics in case of some sports to help the user get better in that particular sport.
3. Calories Burned
While it is mostly present within most activity trackers, it would be a great inclusion for boosting the confidence of people using the app. This could be combined with other metrics which would help people track their fitness. The best way to go about this is going all in, you can also include things like sleep tracking for an optimum all in one experience which almost no one else in the market has on offer right now.
4. Multiple device support
You have to make sure to reach the masses, your device supports direct sync with their choice of devices and fitness trackers. This one can get a bit tricky if you are not hiring a professional mobile app development company. As the list would keep on expanding every few months with new devices being launched, try to accommodate as many devices.
5. Personal Profile and Badges
To make sure personalisation is taken to the user’s level, you will need to add an option to create a personal profile for the users. To give the personal touch to a user’s profile, including badges which certify their achievements in the app, along with what they choose to share. This is a highly required feature to make your app more towards a social fitness app.
6. Maps
Including maps and navigation can help athletes and users gain better control over their course. Many fitness apps miss the opportunity to integrate maps into their apps, and the users are left stranded on their own. Maps serve as an ultimate tool for those seeking adventure and having a GPS enabled map can draw a lot of users to using your fitness-oriented application.
7. Analytics
Analytics can help users with suggestions to improve their workouts and activities, and letting something as useful as data going to waste can be a blunder. You can essentially use analytics to give users all types of recommendations, assuming they opt-in for it. In the longer run, analytics will also help you set the app in a more user-focused direction, which would mean more engagement and better user experience.
8. Challenge Friends
Healthy competition is what Strava strives upon, you can challenge friends as you like when you like, on the course you decide. Your app should have this feature, although it cannot be done for the activities, and you will have to make use of other resources such as GPS. If you want to offer a truly social experience on the app, make sure to include this feature.
Now that you know the features to include, it is time to decide who to get the app developed from?
Your major options are only 3 in this case, you can choose to build your own team, hire freelance developers, or hire a mobile app development company to do the job. While choosing either would have its own pros and cons, it is very important to make an informed decision, as it would cost you a hefty amount of money. Mobile app development can get really expensive if not done right, and making the choice on a lot of factors, lets them bifurcated to available choices below.
1. Building your own team
This is indeed the most expensive option on the list, you need to take care of everything related to employees, apart from paying them salaries. Setting up a company for your mobile app’s development can cost you majorly, as many components won’t need full-time resources to be hired. You can of course hybrid it, but then you would still lack the collective expertise which mobile app development companies have.
2. Hiring a mobile app development company
It is certainly one of the most viable options in the list, depending on the mobile app development company you find and hire. You could get competitive prices, along with their mixed expertise on a variety of mobile app projects. Find an experienced mobile app development company, and work collaboratively or on a turnkey basis, and the result would probably be the same as building your own team.
3. Hiring freelancers
This option is cheapest available, you simply hire a project manager, and let them outsource work to freelancers around the world. Sounds too good to be true? It is, as with many freelancers you wouldn’t have a guarantee they would do the work well, or on time. Many agencies provide them for hire, but anyone can make an account without interviews or portrayal of their skill. Choose this option in case you already have some known freelancers you can trust, otherwise hiring a mobile app development company would be a better choice at any given time.
Conclusion
To sum it up, the future holds a lot more applications like Strava on the way, the fitness industry is growing at a rapid pace. If you have an idea that athletes or fitness enthusiasts can use as a mobile app, try to build one, as the coming year will be the year of mobile apps. We expect a lot of releases and an increase in adoption of mobile apps in the fitness industry in 2021, and to catch up on it would be easier if you get your app development started right now.
We are a mobile app development company which has immense experience in developing different kinds of mobile apps. If you are looking for someone with experience and developers that hold real skill, our company Matellio can provide all of that plus more. We offer a lot of mobile apps development paths such as Native, Hybrid, Cross-platform, etc, through which we can create your apps in less time and cost. If you are interested, just reach out to us and we will be happy to help you.
