Learn to develop a health tracker wearable app

It’s not surprising to see apps running on different devices after phones and PCs because of the gadgets’ improved processors and operating systems.

Now, apps are also getting popular on wearables like smartwatches and fitness bands. It makes it hard for entrepreneurs to ignore the money-making opportunity by publishing apps for wearables.

You can read this blog to understand wearables and how to develop healthy tracker wearable app.

What is Wearable technology?

Wearables are electronic devices that users wear on their body parts. These gadgets link to a smartphone through Bluetooth or cloud technology from which both devices (wearable and smartphones) can exchange the user’s health data.

The wearable devices have health tracking sensors to calculate health factors such as distance covered, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep, etc.

Wearable devices come in many varieties such as smartwatches, smart bands, smart glasses, etc. Also, there are some differences between mobile and wearable apps that you can understand in the next section.

Mobile apps vs. Wearable

These apps may provide similar functionality compared to smartphones, but some points make fitness watch apps different from smartphone apps, which are listed below:

• Wearables apps have limited functionality as compared to mobile applications.
• It needs fewer user interactions and touch inputs
• Many health sensors work in the background, like heart sensors, blood pressure monitoring, etc. 
• Fitness band apps are not cross-platform as compared to smartphone apps. You may need separate apps that would be on wearable devices.

Why invest in wearable app development?

Along with growing the user base of smartphones, the users of wearables technology are growing. Not just for people who track their health, professionals are using wearables as they improve productivity. It is wise not to ignore wearables as they can bring an ultimate money-making potential for app business. Also, you can check the top trends in wearable app technology.

Why are wearables profitable for everyone?

Its fast-growing market share in less time has filled many entrepreneurs with curiosity. Let’s find out the top reason why everyone is interested in wearables by this image.

Increased market share: A study estimated that the number of shipments of smartwatches will be 258 million by 2025. That’s a big number!

Uplifting living standards: Wearable devices assist in shopping through virtual product samples, smartphones for health and fitness enthusiasts, and healthcare monitoring devices- these devices are making life easier. 

Enhanced productivity levels: Setting reminders, keeping track of habits, recording messages, reducing screen time results- they bring your best at being focused on your goals. 

Profitable sectors for your wearable apps!

Knowing the top consuming places for wearables will help you plan and decide your target audience. Later you can make your app to provide benefits and some unique value to the life of targeted users. These are the top-performing fields for wearables you can consider for creating an app: 

1. Fashion branding

Electric components and many sensors with real-time data tracking come attached to fabrics. These devices monitor and feed heart rate, breathing patterns, stress levels, etc. The overall health data appears on your smartphone app.

2. Health and fitness

Fitness is the most popular sector that uses wearable devices. People use smartwatches for heart rate monitoring, step counting, blood oxygen level checks, and other health monitoring activities.

3. Financial solutions

Banking app wearable technology enables easy payment through your wrist device. You can carry on banking activities like checking account balance, finding nearby ATMs, trade market updates, etc. The new wearable barcode scanners allow easy on-the-go access to your account and make payments.

In the next section, you’ll go through app development steps to understand how to develop healthy tracker wearable app.

Steps for making wearable apps

Knowing the app development process will help you to understand better about how to develop healthy tracker wearable app. The development process will describe the overall process of app making, from planning to post launching. Its app development process is almost similar to the mobile app development process.

1. Planning for app development

In this stage, you can do research on your target audiences. You can find a way to bring value to your user’s life through your app. 

After that, you have to check the competitor’s app features and their strong and weak points. These can help you decide what features you can include in your app on wearables. Also, you can choose how you would like to monetize your app. 

2. Choosing the app development team

It’s time to choose the right development team for your app. You can tell your app’s desired features to developers that you want to include in your app. Then you can decide on the wearable platform (iOS, Android) where you want to launch your app.

3. UI/UX design selection

This stage includes focusing on the user interface of an app, like deciding its wireframe, choosing colors, and optimizing design & text according to the small screen size of the device.

The development team can help you choose and make the overall best design of your app by picking up the best color schemes, graphics, and icons for your app.

4. Improving app working on smartwatches

The development team will work on several factors to better optimize your fitness band app in different circumstances, such as making your app compatible to handle maximum app traffic, checking the performance of server-side components, etc.

5. Giving a secure app environment  

App developers understand that it is essential to protect user data from hacking and misuse. They will work on crucial security measures to improve the app security like adding 2FA (OTP), checking industry-wide security standards, checking payment gateway security, etc.

6. Doing app testing on wearables

It is the stage where developers will do application testing on different devices and operating systems. Also, the team will perform beta testing by collecting feedback from non-technical users about its app user experience. The app developers will update an app before its launching to check if it’s working or if there might be some issue regarding the app working.

7. Making the app ready for post-launch

Even if your app is ready to launch, you may still need to focus on other factors to make a successful launch, such as:

• Following the app store guidelines
• Taking and uploading clear screenshots of apps
• Writing detailed app descriptions
• Making app tutorials in explainer videos
• Doing proper app store SEO

From the next section, you can check some essential features you can include in your smartwatch app to make the overall best experience for users.

Features you can add to the wearable apps.

Apps for fitness trackers may have unique features due to differences in screen size and working functionality. These are  the common features you can check in health tracker apps:

1. Multi-device synchronization

Having multiple device synchronization for different smartphones is a must-have feature in your fitness watch app. You can make your app compatible to work with all the latest android and ios smartphone models. This multiple-device synchronization in your app can improve the overall user experience for app users.

2. Location tracking

This feature will help users calculate the total distance covered during walking and running. Location tracking will work based on in-build GPS sensors in wearable devices. The location tracking feature help app users in many ways, such as sharing and tracking someone’s location. For tracking someone’s location, you’ll need to ask their permission.

3. Sensors with Bluetooth connectivity

Bluetooth connectivity will let the user’s smartphone connect with wearable devices. This connectivity will let the wearable send users’ health data over smartphone health tracker apps. 

Users can better review their health stats on a smartphone screen after data sharing. As in the smartphones: the data can be represented in better visualizations such as bar graphs, pie charts, etc., and can gives more detailed information about their health stats.

These are the user data that can transfer from wearables to smartphones: 

• Distance covered
• Elevation
• Calories burned
• Heart rate
• Location
• Blood pressure
• Sleep time
• Blood oxygen
• Sweat level
• Stress level 

All these data differ and depend on the hardware feature included in the device owner’s wearable.

4. Audio/Video Streaming

Streaming can be another best feature you can include in your app. It will let users access media within your app, be it any video & audio files on the screen of their wearable.

5. Data, Cloud, and Security

To store app user data, you need online cloud storage. Cloud services ensure seamless access to user data between smartphones and wearables. You can add a user authentication feature (OTP on mobile number & email address) to provide extra security to users’ data.

But there will be challenges that you may face during wearable app development. You can find these in the next section.

Challenges in wearable app development 

Like developing other mobile apps, making fitness band apps is also challenging. Knowing all those complex situations may be better, which can help you find solutions for all these troubles in advance.

Here are the top challenges that your app development team may face while making apps for fitness trackers.  

1. Battery Issues

The battery of wearables doesn’t last longer as compared to smartphones due to its less power holding capacity. Sometimes the features in your app dramatically suck up the battery of the wearable. It would be better to eliminate all those battery-sucking features during app testing.

2. User Interface

The small screen size of wearables is another worth looking challenge that can disturb the clarity of app UI. Users may find it hard to navigate the app. The developer can insert ultra-large text and icons to improve the app’s clarity for navigation and usage, creating greater visibility.

3. Privacy and Security

We can’t compromise user data security over app development. You may need to follow all app security protocols to protect user data from stealing and hacking. It can be providing app updates on frequent days, providing OTP authentication when changing passwords, etc.

4. Regular Updates

Providing regular app updates will make your app secure, and it brings a list of new features which will make your app more functional and safe. 

Therefore, you can always do market research on fitness watch apps to find new features from your app competitors. You can make that new features even better within your app for getting better advantages in features and app revenue.  

You can check some best wearables apps in the next section on which you can do research for taking ideas and inspiration. 

Best apps for Smartwatches 

Please look at some of the best apps for wearables as a reference for app development. Later you can do market research to find out the top features of each app and integrate them into your app. 

Presenting the app list for taking more ideas and inspiration for your app.

1. Strava 

Strava is a fitness tracker app used to track cycling and running activities using GPS data. It comes with features such as tracking and recording running distance, route mapping, various training challenges, etc. READ ALSO

2. Runkeeper

Runkeeper runs on both Apple Watch and Android Wear devices. Like Strava, Runkeeper comes with built-in GPS. The app can work on wearables without needing to connect with phones.

3. Zombies, run!

This app can be your top preferred app among all these listed apps. This app turns regular jogging activities into challenging storytelling quests. You’ll need to run for your life in this game to avoid being the meal of zombies running behind you.

4. 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge

Most people can’t find time to join the gym due to their busy schedules. They preferred to work out at home, but sometimes due to the non-availability of gym trainers: their workout effort may go waste.

Using this app can bring high advantages to their work schedules. It takes only 7 minutes for their users to perform gym exercises every day from this app.

5. FitStar Yoga

This application provides relaxed yoga sessions, which give detailed information about the time duration and number of calories burned during training. You can become a creator of your yoga sessions. Now moving to the end of this blog.

What have we learned so far?

Users are trying new ways to follow a healthy lifestyle. Many mobile apps are available for health care purposes, but wearables come with extra health-related sensors like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Which attracts most health-conscious users. That’s why making apps for fitness trackers can bring up another money-making opportunity for you.

You can contact Idea Usher to know more about developing fitness band apps. Our team will provide you with fully functional wearable apps.

FAQ’s

It might be possible that you are facing some doubts regarding fitness band app development. You can continue with this section to find some popular questions and their answer regarding app development.

1. Does Idea Usher provide services for app development for wearables devices?

We at Idea Usher are not new to this and have experienced developers who can work on your app for IOS and Android.

2. How can I discuss my app idea with you?

We respect innovative and out-of-the-box thinking. You can share your idea with Idea Usher, and we can draft a plan for your dream project.

3. Am I too late to step into the wearable tech market?

There can’t be a perfect time, and if there is, then it’s now because now you know that this technology is proven to give profits and is estimated to multiply.