What features does a great health club app need? 

No matter how big or small your health club, whether you’re a general fitness club, a CrossFit specialist or part of a larger chain, having a great app is an ultra-useful marketing and customer retention tool. As the trend for fitness and healthy living has gone mainstream in the last 18 months or so, new gyms and fitness clubs have sprung up all around the country. That means that there is more than likely another option for your own members within a few miles – so you need to work extra hard to keep them loyal to you. A dedicated app can help your customers get more out of their membership and help you serve them better. So what features does a great health club app need?

1.     Class bookings

Whether you run dozens of classes a day or just a few a week, an easy class booking system is a vital component for the modern health club app. This should be linked to the user’s membership so they can easily reserve a place for their favourite classes on days and times to suit with just a click or two of the button.

2.     PT Bookings

Just as you want to make it easy for members to book into classes so they don’t miss out, you should also make it easy for them to book sessions with your gym’s personal trainers. This not only gives members access to premium services on demand and offers the convenience of being able to book a session or group of sessions with a PT, it’s also a way to generate more revenue for your business, with sessions often costing anything from £30 –£60 depending on location and trainer.

3.     Videos

Having videos on your app is a real engagement booster. Video is often rated as the most engaging and memorable of content formats so, including video means you’re almost certain to be giving your members useful information in a format that they prefer. To add value to your app, think about what kinds of videos would be useful. These could be anything from tutorials on using certain pieces of kit to circuit sessions which members can load up and then follow when they head inside to work out.

4.     Shop

If you sell apparel or supplements /nutrition products at your health club, having a shop built into your app adds another level of convenience for members and another way for your business to build its revenue streams. Even if you don’t physically sell products at your health club, you could investigate partnerships and affiliate agreements with other suppliers.

5.     Great content

Your health club will naturally be home to a wealth of talent and expertise and you can use this to populate your app with useful content for members. Things like warm up and cool down tips, nutrition advice, healthy recipes and similar can all set your app apart and give members a sense of extra value from their monthly fee.