Nudges in Health and Wellness Apps: Increase User Engagement

Driven by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing stress levels in urban lifestyles, and a growing focus on overall wellness, the health, wellness, and fitness app market is experiencing explosive growth in recent years. This dynamic landscape offers both opportunities and challenges for app developers and marketers.

The Diverse World of Health and Wellness Apps

Today's market offers a wide range of apps catering to various aspects of health and wellness:

1. Fitness Tracking: Apps like Fitbit and Strava
2. Workout Apps: Nike Training Club and Peloton
3. Nutrition and Diet: MyPlate and Noom
4. Mental Health and Meditation: Headspace and Calm
5. Sleep Tracking: Sleep Cycle
6. Women's Health: Flo and Clue
7. General Health Management: Apple Health and Google Fit

From booking lab tests to online consultation sessions to ordering medicines – users expect this journey to be seamless and quick. And with a plethora of options available, users are quick to abandon apps that fail to provide immediate value or maintain their interest over time. To capitalize on this trend and stand out in a competitive market, these apps need to provide compelling user experiences and drive engagement through effective strategies.

Successful health and wellness apps are those that not only offer robust features and accurate tracking but also excel at motivating users, providing personalized experiences, and seamlessly integrating into daily routines. As such, implementing effective engagement strategies, particularly through the use of well-timed and contextually relevant nudges, has become crucial for app retention and growth.

Key Metrics for Success

To thrive in this competitive space, health and wellness apps should focus on improving:

The metrics listed here are not exhaustive but represent a broad selection of commonly used indicators in the health and fitness app industry. Each app may have unique metrics tailored to its specific features and goals.

Nudges: A Powerful Tool for Engagement

Nudges can significantly boost these metrics and enhance overall in-app engagement. Let's explore use cases for nudges in health and fitness apps throughout the user journey, along with real-world examples.

Onboarding and Goal Setting

MyFitnessPal uses in-app tooltips to guide new users through profile setup, goal-setting, and meal logging, ensuring a smooth onboarding experience.

Activity Reminders and Motivation

Fitbit uses vibrant, full-screen modals with badges to celebrate user achievements, and nudges to share them socially.

Progress Tracking and Achievements

Strava leverages its social features by using nudges to encourage users to join challenges or connect with friends.

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Nutrition and Diet Support

Gabit uses a floater with the "message icon" on the screen to nudge users connect with their experts.

Adoption of multiple features within the app

Calm’s in-app tutorials are painless, essentially guiding users along the platform’s fundamental functionalities of the app.

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Reducing Drop-offs

Orangehealth uses coachmarks to highlight the “WhatsApp” option available to assist users in using the app

Checklist for Driving Engagement in Apps

Successful health and wellness apps leverage several key engagement strategies:

• Educational content to increase user engagement
• Social features for community support
• Gamification elements for continued motivation
• Customization through AI and user data
• Integration with wearable devices

Challenges in Building Effective Nudge Strategies

Despite the clear benefits, many health and fitness apps struggle to implement effective nudge strategies in-house due to:

1. Limited Engineering Resources: Development teams are often focused on core product features.
2. Challenges in Experimenting: Time and resource constraints limit the ability to test various nudge strategies.
3. Difficulty in Real-time Deployment: Configuring real-time nudges requires significant technical effort.
4. Data Privacy: Ensuring the security of sensitive health data
5. Personalisation: Catering to diverse populations with varying health needs

Plotline helps growth and marketing teams build nudges, fully no-code

Plotline's no-code in-app engagement platform enables you to deploy in-app nudges without writing code, all within 15 minutes. We provide powerful event-based targeting and user segmentation to help the right user take the right action at the right time.

Want to see how to create nudges for your app within minutes through Plotline? Check out the interactive demo below. 👇‍

Apart from nudges, you can use other UI elements like stories, quizzes, etc., to engage your users effectively with Plotline.

If you're interested in learning how nudges can drive activation, adoption, retention, and monetization metrics in your health and wellness app, start a free trial with Plotline today and unlock the full potential of your app's engagement strategy.