Consumers continue to look to mobile health and fitness applications to help achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle. By tracking their progress, both in what they eat and activities they undertake throughout the day, consumers are using these types of apps to make smarter, more health-conscious decisions, in addition to improving various aspects of their fitness.

However, a new report from the Media and Services UX (MSX) group at Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com) surveying avid health and fitness consumers using health and/or fitness mobile applications, has found that implementing multiple improvements will lead to more useful, usable, and compelling solutions.

Surveying consumers in the US and UK who used at least one health and/or fitness mobile application multiple times per week, Strategy Analytics found that many of these apps catered only to one side: either health (e.g. food entry and logging) or fitness (e.g. tracking my run/walk). Consumers who were interested in tracking both were being forced to seek multiple apps to complement one another, each requiring separate data entry. Strategy Analytics says consumers want an all-in-one type of health and fitness app; this presents an opportunity to monetize a solution.

"As many health and fitness apps currently exist for free, smarter health/fitness app offerings could serve as strong differentiators amongst competing apps and provide an opportunity for a paid health/fitness app,” says Christopher Dodge, associate director, MSX and report author, commented. “Significantly, consumers in this study were willing to pay for this experience.”