Developing a Diet and Nutrition App: Features & Monetization Strategies
According to MarketsandMarkets, the global personalized nutrition market is valued at $8.2 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $16.4 billion by 2025. The high demand for nutrition solutions makes startups and well-established businesses want to break in the health and wellness food market.
Planning to build a diet and nutrition app? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Today, we talk about what diet apps are and who their target users are. We also outline must-have and nice-to-have features as well as monetization strategies.
What is a diet and nutrition app?
Diet and nutrition applications help users develop healthy eating habits. Take Fooducate as an example. The app lets users quickly pull up nutritional information and track calories, workouts, and macronutrients. Users also get diet tips and suggestions for healthier foods. Another great example is Lifesum, a health and fitness app that allows users to count calories, create personalized diet plans, monitor daily healthy habits, get meal suggestions, track macros, obtain more detailed information about their weight, body fat, waist size, and BMI, and receive tips and feedback on how to improve over time and develop healthier eating habits. What’s interesting is that Lifesum is the first healthcare app that has been launched for Google Assistant.
There are different types of diet and nutrition apps including:
- Vegan nutrition apps
- Pregnancy nutrition apps
- Diabetes trackers
- Fitness nutrition apps
- Bodybuilding nutrition apps
- Marketplaces that connect users and nutrition coaches
What is the target market for diet and nutrition apps?
The major reason why startups fail is not meeting a market need, according to CB Insights. That’s why it’s very important to know who you’re going to target with your particular app before rushing into development. If your app doesn’t create real value for its users, it’s worthless. You need to understand the demographics of your target market and the problems they cope with. This will help you create a one-of-a-kind solution.
Below, we give you statistics on industry leaders and target users:
- As of March 2020, the leading health and fitness mobile apps in the Google Play Store were MyFitnessPal, Calm, and Headspace. (Source: Statista)
- The typical user of a diet app is young. As of 2017, 17% of 30- to 45-year-olds and 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds regularly use apps to track their diet and nutrition. (Source: Statista)
- Eating healthier was one of a New Year’s resolutions for 48% of Americans. (Source: Statista)
- Users download healthcare apps to monitor nutrition, track exercise, learn to work out, and reduce weight. (Source: Translational Behavioral Medicine).
Yet this is just an overall picture of the target audience of nutrition apps. Make sure you know who’s going to use your diet and nutrition app.
Stages of mobile nutrition app development at Steelkiwi
Regardless of whether you choose iOS or Android, your application will go through the following stages of development at Steelkiwi: discovery, prototyping, design and coding, and testing and deployment.
- Discovery and research. First, you introduce your idea to the software development team. Then, we help you determine if your app idea is viable by analyzing competitors, the market, and the target audience. After we validate market demand for your product, we define the key objectives and the core value of the app and write a product specification document to outline how your app will function.
- Prototyping. At this stage, our design team proceeds to wireframing. This saves developers’ effort and time and specifies the app’s structure, navigation, and features.
- Code development. During this stage, your team turns your idea into a product.
- Testing and deployment. After your app is developed, our QA specialist tests it and makes sure there are no bugs. After that, we publish it to the app store(s).
Must-have features of a diet and nutrition app
Although certain features are only apt for particular applications, some core features can be found in almost any diet and nutrition app.
Personal profiles
After downloading your app, a user needs to registrate and create an account. At this stage, users should fill in personal information like name, gender, age, height, weight, food preferences, allergies, and level of physical activity.
Food logging and dashboard
Allow users to analyze their eating habits. They should be able to log food and water intake and see their progress on a dashboard which can track calories, fat, protein, and carbs.
Push notifications
Push notifications are an effective tool for increasing user engagement and retention. To motivate users to keep moving toward their goals, you should deliver information on their progress toward the current goal and remind them to log what they eat.
Help
App onboarding is crucial. Make sure you provide clear instructions on how to interact with your app. Don’t forget to include a help button in case users have problems.
Nice-to-have features of a diet and nutrition app
Since nutrition apps can have different purposes, their functionality can differ accordingly. Below are features that you may want to include later on or that can be useful for some diet apps.
Calorie counter
Enable your application to calculate calories users have burned and eaten based on the data they’ve logged.
Blog
A lot of users want a diet and nutrition application to not only count calories but also share some diet tips to help them improve eating habits. This is where blog come in handy. There, you can share the latest food and nutrition research, news, and health tips.
Barcode scanner
Let users count calories and see accurate nutrition information via a built-in barcode scanner.
Recipe book
Users will appreciate the opportunity to find healthy recipes in your app. You can include pictures, video, and even voice instructions in your recipes. Also, allow users to rate recipes and sort them by keywords, ingredients, categories, and calories.
Diet plans
Help users maintain a healthy diet by offering diet plans. Usually, a diet plan includes meal suggestions, nutritional tips, recipes, and recommended total calorie intake per week or day.
Shopping list
You can let users import ingredients from a diet plan or a recipe to a shopping list or add groceries manually.
Experts
Your users will definitely appreciate being able to get in touch with diet coaches for expert advice. You can make this a paid feature.
Gamification
Consider including game elements to increase user engagement and retention. You can use ranks, badges, and points to reward users for achievements such as losing weight or completing goals.
Integration with wearables
There are different trackers and wearables you can integrate with. For example, you can integrate your app with Apple Watch, Android Wear, Jawbone, Fitbit, and Samsung Gear to synchronize data on physical activity and health metrics.
Monetization strategies for diet and nutrition apps
If you want to generate revenue through your app, there are a couple of monetization models you can go with. The most effective are in-app advertising, in-app purchase upgrades, subscriptions, and a premium model. You can mix monetization strategies to achieve greater revenue.
Monetization strategy
- In-app advertising — This strategy provides a valuable source of revenue at the same time ensuring your app remains free. You can choose from native ads, video ads, interstitial ads, and banner ads. The point here is that you get paid every time users see an ad or click on it, depending on the advertising model. Yet you should be careful with this strategy as users can get annoyed by ads and be discouraged from using your app. The ads placed in your app should be relevant and unintrusive. The key is advertising shouldn’t disrupt the main user experience.
Real-life examples — MyFitnessPal, Fooducate, ShopWell
2. In-app purchase upgrades/freemium model — Freemium is one of the most favorite monetization strategies among the top nutrition apps. With the freemium model, users can access basic features for free but they need to pay to access extra features. This is a great opportunity to drive traffic to your app as users are more likely to try before buying. If users decide to convert, they do so with full knowledge of the app’s value.
Our advice is this ― grow first and monetize later. You can start with free services to create network effect, acquire users, and encourage participation.
Real-life examples — MyFitnessPal, Fooducate, ShopWell, Diet Point, Waterlogged, MyPlate Calories Tracker
3. Subscriptions — Subscriptions are a subgroup of in-app purchases. The latter charges users on a per-use basis while the subscription model generates revenue by charging users fee on a recurring basis at regular intervals.
Real-life examples — Lifesum, HealthifyMe, 8fit
4. Premium model/paid apps — This is a revenue model when you charge users to download your app. If you decide to go with this model, keep in mind that there’s huge competition and thousands of free applications vying for users’ attention. You need to make your app stands above the crowd in terms of design, functionality, and ease of use.
Real-life examples — My Diet Coach — Pro, Lose It, Food Intolerances, Nutrients, Carbs Control
Request an estimate for your diet and nutrition app with Steelkiwi
Because apps differ, it’s quite challenging to say how much it’ll take to build a diet and nutrition app. The factors influencing the cost include technology stack, design, features, the platforms your app is built on as well as the software development team you work with.
If you’re interested in knowing how much it’ll cost to create a nutrition app with Steelkiwi, feel free to message our sales team. Meanwhile, we suggest you check out our portfolio to get a closer look at what we offer.
