A platform for online fitness coaching
Learn how we built a convenient platform for personal trainers that takes customer experience to the next level!
About the client
For ten years, Diren Kartal, the fitness coach and the owner of Project X, has been conducting fitness training. Since Diren established Project X, he created a hybrid training environment, where he communicated with his clients using Aweber and Slack, and he tracked their results by means of Excel Tables. To some extent, Project X had been operated manually. That was inconvenient for both Diren and his clients.
That’s how our client came up with the idea of the end-to-end fitness platform for online coaching.
Diren chose Onix upon the recommendation of an existing client who also had a fitness project. So our client knew that Onix had the right expertise and a proven track record for fitness projects.
Challenges to overcome
Providing online fitness coaching requires plenty of communication and managing content such as educational videos, workout plans, recipes, clients' results, and many more. Using different tools like spreadsheets, email, YouTube videos, and text messages is not effective and is rather inconvenient. Moreover, this sort of management is a thing of the past, especially with the advent of new technologies.
Therefore, fitness coaches and clients need a single place where they can cooperate smoothly and effectively without spending much time on the admin tasks.
Product scope
The Onix team was responsible for:
Ensuring an effective and transparent development process
Creating an intuitive and appealing interface that drives engagement with clients
Identifying and collecting requirements to meet project and business goals
Integrating several third-party services to extend product functionality
Building a fully-functional and well-structured web application (with mobile responsive design) to provide online fitness coaching
Adding an opportunity to hold secure payments
The platform we built benefits several groups of end-users:
Fitness coacher gets an opportunity to:
- Offer a professional personalized coaching experience that boosts business growth
- Effectively manage clients in one place
- Reduce the time-consuming admin tasks that distract from providing professional services to the clients
In their turn, customers:
- Try a modernized and engaging fitness experience that allows them to reach excellent results
- Track results and visualize progress towards specific goals over time
- Get access to exclusive educational, training & workout content in one digital place
Ready to modernize your fitness business by leveraging top-tier technologies?
Solutions we provide
The top-level requirement was to create a well-structured fitness platform, where users can get access to a number of Project X features according to their membership type.
The client already had a site on WordPress, and we needed to achieve better performance and extend the platform functionality. However, to provide the best solutions to the client's business challenges, using WordPress was not practical. Thus, we offered another tech stack that would guarantee high-quality product operation. Moreover, our sports app development team decided to implement reliable third-party services to add extra vital features:
for sending system emails
for custom emailing
for secure payment processing
The Project X covers the following advanced features:
Proper product operation and efficiency
The main task was to migrate a WordPress site to a custom-built web application (with mobile responsive design). For the backend, we used Node.Js, and for the frontend Vue.Js. Using reliable technologies allowed us to guarantee the high-quality app operation, enhance the product capacity, and significantly broaden functionality
Effortless client management and accountability
Managing clients and their results are now easier since all data is in one place. We built a sophisticated administrative panel with appropriate filters and report-generating tools that allow administrators to track users' membership transitions, payments, and accountability and communicate with them.
Easy generation of customized workout plan
The coach can generate the customized workout plan according to the information given by users during onboarding (goals, medical condition, biodata, etc.) All of this info is available in the admin panel.
Calorie calculator
This feature calculates the daily calorie intake for the users according to their goals and anthropometry. We used the owner’s formula that was adjusted to the users’ goals and correctly displayed each user's custom instruction. Also, we integrated Sendbird to send users their results of the calorie calculation via email.
Challenges for clients
This is a gamifying feature that encourages people to take part in the competition and reach great results. Users check-in daily (fill in all the required data), upload their “Progress photo", and get points. They also can monitor their results on the leaderboards. This fun feature allows us to tap users' intrinsic motivations so they enjoy using the Project X more.
Secure payments processing
We integrated the Stripe system that allows users to accept payments and send payouts online securely. This feature also provides an opportunity to track payments within the platform and manage subscriptions in the app.
Onix design solutions
Make UI design clean and minimalistic. Ensure simple and intuitive UX.
Research
Any successful product is created with the end-user in mind. So at that stage, we thoroughly learned about the audience and identified users’ needs.
- Consider basic user needs (What’s their problem? What issue are we trying to solve for users?)
- Carry out a comparative analysis of competitors (we visually display the comparison in different charts)
- Prepare user persona based on research data (profile of our ideal customer)
User flow
Based on the outcome of the research, we prepared a mindmap to visualize a representation of the users’ interactions with the product.
Design implementation
Creating appealing visuals
Our designers created stunning visuals and delivered a scalable design system to keep the Project X look and feel consistent.
Simple navigation
Our designers avoided adding a lot of complicated navigation links. We built an intuitive interface that enables users to find the required feature easily and access them quickly rather than move from link to link and back all the time.
Intuitive interface
We made a holistic dashboard view that effortlessly tracks and manages clients' data in one place.
Engaging user experience
We made a holistic dashboard view that effortlessly tracks and manages clients' data in one place.
Mobile responsive design
We added a chatbot to the account pages to simulate Diren’s assist coach requesting a user to go through a check-in process daily. This solution replaced a standard boring form to fill out daily, introduced a more engaging experience, and encouraged users to input their data.
We've worked hard to deliver simple, clean, and attractive UI / UX design. Thanks to our design solutions, end-users can use the platform quickly and effortlessly!
Core technology
Node.js
Aweber
Sendbird
Stripe
Vue.js
Figma
Testimonial
Results
As a result of Onix’s collaboration, our client now operates a reliable, well-performing web application that allows for a deeper level of control over clients' data, their results, and communication.
Combining digital workflow with a highly interactive all-in-one fitness platform, our client offers a comfortable environment for thousands of users on the platform acting simultaneously: watching workout videos, doing daily check-ins, onboarding, creating and updating their fitness goals.
From now on, our client delivers professional coaching services online more efficiently while helping his customers achieve the best results.
Achieved business results
Business in one digital place
Optimized clients management
High-quality online fitness coaching services
Reduced manual daily tasks
Deeper level of clients' results control
Enhanced communication and client support
