Top tips to create a diet and nutrition app for a healthy lifestyle

The desire of living a healthy lifestyle has become a craze these days. People are striving to be fit and taking an interest in fitness applications. 

Previously, we described how personal training apps have become a rising trend. Also, how can you create a 7-minute workout app to give your fitness training business a boost. 

Now that you know about fitness apps, it is time to deepen your knowledge about a particular type of fitness application, i.e., diet and nutrition apps. 

According to Statista, a survey conducted in 2017 states that about 26 percent of respondents aged between 18 to 29 regularly use apps to track their nutrition.

As there is such a vast usage, you should also create an app for Android and iOS via WooCommerce app maker if you are running a health business. 

In this post, we will discover the core features of a diet and nutrition app and the efficient ways to overtake the leaders in the health app market.

Best ideas for developing a diet and nutrition app

The Apple App Store and Google Play Store have plenty of diet apps. All mobile applications cater to different target audiences and hence have different functionality and feature sets. 

We have listed a few mobile apps to determine clearer diet app ideas. Note that many such apps combine these ideas in order to attract more users. Let’s take a look:

1. Calorie counter

The main objective of the calorie counter is to measure the calories consumed and burned by the user in a day. Such apps work in a pretty simple way. First, a user sets a goal, according to their desired weight. Second, they input information about their activities and the food they eat. Third, the app calculates the calories they have consumed and burnt.

Based on the users’ goals and calorie data, these apps can analyze their progress and send them notifications with dietary recommendations or reminders. For example, MyFitnessPal.

2. Meal planning

Such applications help users track their calories even before they eat. Users have to choose their weight goals, diet, and food preferences. 

According to this information, these apps generate a detailed diet program for a day, week, or month. Users can also choose different recipes from the app’s recipe book. And, can also add their own recipe. The best examples of such apps are Diet Assistant and Eat This Much.

3. Marketplace

The primary objective of these apps is to connect users with diet coaches and to provide them with personalized suggestions and nutrition tips. 

Rise is an excellent example of a marketplace app, where users pay diet coaches to keep an eye on their diet and give recommendations about nutrition. 

4. Special diet app

With these apps, you can narrow your target audience and develop an app for particular customers rather than developing an app for every user.

For instance, you can create a nutrition app for pregnant women or an app that will help people with diabetes to keep an eye on their blood sugar levels.

5. Betting app

Using these applications, a person bets a certain amount of money on the condition that they will lose a certain amount of weight within a certain amount of time. That means, if they achieve their goal and prove it, they will get their money back.

DietBet is an app that perfectly illustrates this idea.

Must-have features of a diet and nutrition app

Now that you have carefully analyzed different nutrition apps to find the essential features that will help your app outdo the market leaders. 

Let’s see the number of features your app must offer to meet the needs of users:

1. Registration and personal accounts

Personalization is a critical factor for every diet and nutrition app. 

The primary purpose of a diet and nutrition app should be to gather and analyze user data, including age, weight, food preferences, preferred diet, allergies, goals, level of activity, and more.

2. Dashboard and food logging

A dashboard contains the most important information about the user’s progress and useful nutrition tips. It should be visually appealing and provide only the most essential information. 

Without a dashboard, food logging is nothing. Therefore, the app should consist of a vast food dictionary, a diary, and some input fields. You also need to think about the ingredients that should be available offline. 

3. Push notifications

Push notifications are a powerful tool for increasing user engagement and retention.

Send push notifications to help users keep motivated and give them information about their current goals. Also, these notifications show your concern for each user, reminding them about meals and other things. 

Moreover, push notifications cause users to see your app, where they can log into what they eat. However, you need to think carefully about the frequency of notifications, and ensure not to annoy. Else, users will block them. 

4. Integration with fitness trackers

The use of fitness trackers is proliferating. 

About 30% of users owned a fitness band, and 44 percent of them used it daily, according to Statista. 

When the primary goal of your app is to count calories, it is important to add a fitness tracker support. Else, users will need to input information about their exercise manually. 

However, with tracker support, users’ information about their activities, like jogging, cycling, etc. will be automatically added. Your app can get health data such as blood pressure and the heart rate of the users, as well. 

5. Google Fit and Apple HealthKit

Google Fit uses device sensors to monitor activities like cycling, running, etc. And, it can also be used to calculate burnt calories. 

Apple HealthKit is a repository for fitness data that enables health applications to exchange data. HealthKit data can only be made available to your app if a user gives permission for storing and analyzing data. 

6. Help and Support

Last but not the least, make your app appealing from the very minute users open it. For example, make the onboarding process smooth and simple. 

Additionally, you can create beautifully animated tutorials to help users quickly figure out how your app works. However, going overboard with the information will make users uninstall the app. It is because users want to be fit instead of reading a whole manual.

A help and support button, in this case, can come to the rescue. Put it in the corner of the app that will make it easier for people to use your app.

Additional features

The features mentioned above are the ideal ones if you want to create an app to attract users' attention. However, once the user base has started growing, it’s time to think through adding new features into the app. 

To enhance your application, you can implement the following features:

1. Dietary recommendations

Add personalized nutritional recommendations to make your mobile app more useful. Primarily, analyze a user’s healthy eating habits and goals to generate suggestions. 

The best solution is to add a live chat feature where users can connect with the nutritionists.

2. Healthy food search

Cooking healthy meals can be time-consuming. You can resolve this issue by helping them find healthy meals from local restaurants in your diet and nutrition app. 

Allow users to find the nearest restaurants with healthy food based on their location and food preferences via your app.

The HealthyOut app is an excellent example of such a feature. 

3. Strong community

Build a community where users can accompany each other on their dieting journey. 

A blog is an encouraging opportunity to share useful information about fitness and dieting within your app. Additionally, social sharing, forums enable users to share their thoughts, goals, and experiences. 

4. Recipe book

A recipe book can be a win-win feature for both users and app owners. Add a section with recipes and let users add their own recipes to help them make healthy dishes at home. 

SideChef, for example, has implemented voice instructions and video tutorials in their fitness app.

5. Shopping list

This feature is deeply connected with recipes. 

When a user chooses a recipe from your app, the ingredients can automatically be added to their shopping list. Users can add ingredients by themselves too.

Wrapping up

Wellness and healthy lifestyles have become a growing trend. 

If you want to enter into this niche, you will need to create an outstanding diet and nutrition app that helps you increase your user base as well as revenue. 

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Created on Apr 22nd 2020 05:53. Viewed 438 times.

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