Yoga App Development: Case Study-based Guide for Yoga Studios or Startups

Nowadays, yoga has turned from an exotic Brain-Mind-Body practice into one of the most popular well-being routines. When combined with mobile technologies, which is another trend that started in the last decade, it usually results in tremendous success.

Moreover, it looks like the popularity of yoga apps will only grow and get more stable.

If you plan to create a yoga app, you can probably find yourself in one of these 2 categories:

1. You’re either a yoga studio owner or teacher (in other words, you have a running business in this wellness industry, either offline or without a user-friendly application) who wants to have more tools to retarget and retain your audience, as well as do it more efficiently. Moreover, you can not only cover your existing customers but reach a much wider audience.
2. You’re a Startup Company in this field that doesn’t have any offline yoga-related business but has a unique idea and vision on how to help yoga practitioners with their challenges.

To embark on building your own yoga application, let's first envision typical yoga practitioners, understand their pain points, and explore ways to assist them.

📈 Trends and Analysis of the Yoga Mobile App Market

To begin with, let's delve a bit more into the yoga applications market. According to Gitnux forecasts, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global yoga market is projected to be 9% from 2023 to 2028, reaching an estimated value of nearly USD 105.9 billion in 2022.

The popularity of online yoga courses is also on the rise. A survey conducted in Japan in 2020 revealed that 40.8% of respondents prefer online yoga due to its convenient participation compared to physically attending classes.

🧘‍♀️ Yoga App Users: Their Pain Points and Your Solutions

If you want to successfully target those yoga students who have high chances of becoming your paying customers, it’s important to outline their key characteristics. Here they are:

So what are the reasons to develop an app for yoga? Take a look at the reasons below and the answer will appear on its own!

🏬 Why Build an App for a Yoga Studio?

A mobile application can be a powerful enhancement to your business. The best thing about how to build a yoga mobile app for your existing business is that it can be used for both acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones.

Thus, your target might be:

Customers (or potential customers who are considering this opportunity right now) who are looking for a deeper and more personal interaction with your teachers/studio, and people who match your buyer portrait but are located in other cities and regions.

Therefore, the main reasons to create a yoga app for your studio are:

1. You will be able to support a more personalized relationship with your customers.
2. It is also possible to reach a new audience with your sessions and sell yoga exercise packs not only to people in your region but all over the globe.
3. You will have more tools to retain clients.
4. Customers will be able to pay for the membership plans online on a recurring basis in just several clicks from their smartphones.

👨‍💻 Why Develop an App for a Yoga Startup?

Just like for classical businesses, it’s quite reasonable for Startups to create an App. The stats from the Yoga Alliance’s Report prove this idea:

• 98% of yoga practitioners consider their level as beginner-intermediate. Therefore, they need some guidance and assistance — a pain-point that you can target.
• 59% of people who do yoga, practice it at least once a week. It means they’ll have a repeated need in your application.
• Yoga practitioners are usually good-earners, so the audience you are targeting is also a ready-to-pay one. .
• With the deployment of an online and mobile-centric business model, you'll be able to interact with any of your users, any time, from anywhere.

As a Startup, you could target, for example, the following audience:

Individual yoga practitioners of a beginner/intermediate level who do yoga on their own 2 times per week and seek professional guidance and tips.

Meditation and Mindfulness Yoga Apps

Meditation and yoga make a great combination, don't they? Such apps can confidently be categorized as a separate type, as in addition to yoga asanas and explanations, yoga meditation apps focus on meditative practices and mindfulness.

Beginner-Friendly Yoga Apps

These apps are designed for yoga beginners and offer straightforward exercises along with clear instructions. Typically, these apps adopt a "follow-along" style, featuring videos that demonstrate the correct execution of yoga asanas.

🔎 A Closer Look at the Asana Rebel App

Asana Rebel is yoga inspired fitness app designed to cater to a wide range of wellness goals. It's an all-in-one platform that assists users in achieving their health and fitness goals such as losing weight, increasing strength, or performing high-intensity routines and moving meditations.

📋 The Best Yoga Apps List

There is no shortage of alternatives when it comes to yoga apps, each one has its own features and pricing structures. The following contrasts some of the top yoga apps according to their main benefits and monthly fees:

⚙️ Tech Stack For Yoga App Development

Here are some technical tools that your development partner can use to keep the good price-quality ratio and deliver your application on time while addressing the question of how to make a yoga app.

• Facebook Mobile SDKs can be helpful in many different ways: a fast sign-up process, analytics, monetization, providing customer support through Messenger, etc.
• If you want to create a yoga app with in-app payments, Stripe or Braintree SDKs are definitely some of the best options.
• Firebase SDK can be used in many ways. For example, you can implement a Push Notifications feature. Also, you can use the Firebase Console in your first stages to avoid building a separate Dashboard.

# 7 Maintenance and Updates

The application is ready and released, but this is not the end. Regularly update the application, add new content, features, and fix any bugs. Monitor user reviews and analyze them to continually improve the application. In the future, you might want to expand the features of your app and offer fitness training with BLE-based (Bluetooth Low Energy) equipment. In that case, you should study how developers integrate BLE devices into fitness apps React Native .

By following all these steps you will be able to make your own yoga app like Asana Rebel.

💰 Yoga App Monetization Strategy

Now that we've covered how to start an app for online yoga, it's time to discuss monetization strategy. Here, we will take a detailed look at various methods that will help you not only develop a mobile app for yoga but also make it financially successful.

There are several ways to monetize your application. Let's examine each of them in more detail:

• Freemium Model: It’s the most used revenue strategy for yoga applications. Similar to Asana Rebel, these apps charge for premium content yet give out basic functions for free. With this approach, users may test out the app before deciding to sign up for a premium membership.
• In-app Purchases: With the app, users may purchase particular products or features like guided meditations, yoga courses, podcasts, or customized training regimens. Users who would rather pay just for what they actually need at that specific moment are catered to by this arrangement.
• Subscription Model: Users who want unrestricted access to a range of classes pay a regular price under the subscription model. With this arrangement, consumers may experiment with different yoga styles and teachers without having to commit to buying individual classes.
• Ads: Including advertisements is a typical approach for free apps. Without charging consumers directly, it makes money. However, excessive or bothersome advertising shouldn't detract from the user experience.
• Sponsorship and Affiliate Sales: Forming alliances with companies that are associated with yoga and wellness might prove to be profitable. This might entail signing direct sponsorship agreements or receiving payments via affiliate marketing.
• Paid Downloads: One-time download fees might work well for apps that cater to a certain niche or offer exclusive content.

Choosing a particular monetization model for a yoga application involves understanding your target audience, offering quality and personalized content, and taking into account the various preferences of users. By focusing on user experience and added value, yoga applications can effectively monetize, helping users achieve their health goals.

📚 Case Study: Pocket Yoga, Find What Feels Good

Before we finish, let’s review a few yoga app examples to see how the mentioned above theory meets practice.

Pocket Yoga & Pocket Yoga Teacher

This Startup is a perfect example of how you can connect instructors and learners by developing a yoga application.

The Pocket Yoga application application is designed for those who want to practice yoga.

The most remarkable features are:

• The exercise database includes over 200 illustrated poses (moreover, each goes with the voice instructions, description, and benefits).
• Users can choose practice sets created by professional teachers.
• Another idea you can reuse when developing a yoga application is letting users play music from their device’s library or other apps in place of the default music.

The monetization strategy is based on the subscription model: from $9.99 a month to $99.99 a year with a 7-30 days free trial period. For this money, people can access the following functionality:

• 100+ hours of HD videos.
• Possibility to download content for offline use.
• The comment section for community members to share their ideas and opinions.
• Social sharing.

As you can see, the set of features is quite basic. Yet, the app has an average rating of 5 stars (the best possible) based on 2200+ ratings.

💰 Cost to Make a Yoga App

Here is the estimate of costs to build a yoga application from the Stormotion Team: