Top Guidelines to Create a Meditation App like Calm and Headspace
- Mobile
- May 26, 2020
We live in a rapidly changing world where people lead an economic lifestyle. We are getting continuously engaged in meeting lots of responsibilities. Be it taking care of the family or the job, everybody is accountable for taking care of something.
As a result, stress has become a disease of the 21st century that demands mindfulness strategies, therapists, and exclusive meditation practices regularly. We never experienced such amounts of stress before. Hence, to lower daily stress and boost our mental wellbeing, we must opt for modern technologies, incorporative mobile apps.
Meditation is in high demand presently. When it comes to trying something new to reduce stress, mindfulness app development seems to be a popular service. Headspace and Calm were the first meditation apps to deliver this service.
Many people argue about the efficacy of meditations but it makes sense to develop a meditation app like Calm and Headspace. If you also agree, our guidelines can assist you. You can do the same with some robust twists and enter the profitable and meaningful market of meditation apps.
Meditation App Market Growth
Calm started helping people meditate and live a stress-free life while keeping their mobile aside. As a result, the meditation app, according to the most recent stats, the value of which was $189.64 million as of 2018, is predicted to increase to $4377.95 million by 2027, with a CAGR of 41.3%.
In 2019, the 10 best meditation applications earned USD 195M, 52% more than in 2018. The target of youth with technology and mindfulness has resulted in huge interests in meditation apps. Also, earning from meditation apps increased from only USD 8M to USD 195M between 2015 and 2019, and it is still growing. So, it’s the right time to develop a meditation app like Calm and Headspace!
To provide you an idea of how to develop a meditation app like Headspace and Calm, here are a few tips for you!
Things to Consider for Creating a Meditation App like Headspace and Calm
To succeed in meditation app development, here are the top essential factors that you need to consider when developing such app:
1. Clarify Your Business Idea
You must decide on your app concept before hiring an app development team. At present, there are several types of meditation apps available:
- Yoga app
- Mental health tracker app
- Meditation music app
- Guided sleep meditation app
- Weight loss meditation app
- Meditation app for beginners
- Walking meditation app
- Breathe meditation app
2. Choose the Right Mobile App Platform
Your mindfulness and meditation app can be compatible with both Android and iOS platform. It will certainly increase app development costs. So, if you have a confined budget, you can develop just an Android or iOS app. After that, you can boost your service so it can perform on another platform also.
3. Use AR/VR Technology
AR/VR technology makes users experience a virtual environment that can reduce their anxieties and fear well. This is how to accelerate their way of relaxing and boosting mental health.
Thereby, discussing the combination of such top-notch technologies while planning for developing an app like Headspace or Calm, is also a productive way of increasing the results.
4. Start with Using the MVP Model
To validate your meditation app development concept, use the MVP model. This helps you save money and assess user behavior for adding the most popular features amid the second development phase.
While developing an app MVP, you are recommended to refrain from sophisticated features like chats, in-app payments, and video streams. Rather your meditation app MVP should incorporate:
- Sign up and sign in
- Gamification to enter a new meditation level
- User profile with progress statistics
- Limited library with previously recorded meditation sessions
- An introductory video or animation
Read also: Why an MVP is Important Part in Mobile App Development Cycle
5. Choose the Right Approach To UI/UX
To develop an app like Calm or Headspace, you should build a program that will help users having anxiety. The correct design plays a pivotal role in this case. When it comes to developing a meditation app, you cannot do the same as a music app or fitness service.
Rules that you should remember for UI/UX design for a meditation or yoga app incorporate:
- Be cautious about the details and abstain from overloaded patterns.
- Don’t use bright shades; rather you can select pastel, palette colors.
- Include some animated movements.
6. Consider Gamification to Engage More Users
A meditation app gets more user engagement if it is integrated with a gamification feature. For example, users will involve in finishing a workout session and accomplishing a badge. The urge for maintaining the score will extend the KPIs automatically and result in purchasing the paid subscription eventually.
Several folks look forward to reaching new milestones and succeeding in the app; thereby, it’s an amazing perk for your meditation app development.
7. Integrate Your App with Wearables
Integration with wearables is an amazing way of making an application more progressive and serving more audience. Those who meditate pay heed to their health; hence, sometimes they use wearables and fitness trackers.
You will have to use APIs from the makers of your target devices if you want to get data from wearables and showcase them. Wear OS and WatchOS by Google and Apple are the two main OS for smartwatches.
8. Provide Meditation Programs
Meditation programs are the basics of your app. To engage your users, you must offer a large library of meditation programs for various objects and update and enhance it continuously. This will keep you different from your rivals.
9. Target All Age Groups
As per the CDC survey, meditation is famous among all age groups. If you want the utmost reach, you should target users of all age groups with a different meditation object. Nevertheless, you can also select another tactic and select a specific niche.
10. Offer Virtual Assistance from an Expert
Virtual assistance helps users solve their queries round-the-clock. In-app videos enable users to save and download offline or online streaming, so they can refer to it when they want.
The professional support drives more traffic to your online meditation platform and makes a reliable connection with your target audience.
11. Consider Monetization Strategies
You can opt for different app monetization strategies to enable users to make purchases. You can monetize your app through subscriptions or purchases. Also you can plan for monetizing with ads. Think about it while designing the app to make some free spaces for them.
Top Features to Include in Your Meditation App
Source: Meditation App
Think about adding the following features while developing an app like Headspace and Calm:
1. Sign In and Sign Up
Provide registration via mobile number, email ID, and social media. Moreover, you can enable users to select from various social media accounts like Google, Instagram, and Facebook. Ensure to make a short registration page and a fast signup procedure.
2. Customized User Profile
As the name of the feature depicts, this feature allows users to make their profiles on your app where they can store all data associated with them or see their activities.
3. Introductory Course
To make an app like Calm or Headspace, you should predict all possibilities incorporating the opportunity of practicing meditation that your users haven’t encountered before.
Headspace provides a free introductory course of lessons. You are recommended to do the same and describe the ways of using your service to enhance all users’ meditation practice.
4. Onboarding Tutorial
Your app must be clear and easy to use. Create an onboarding tutorial if you want to present all features in a user-friendly and organized way. This tutorial guides all users through your app. These tutorials are generally animated, so ensure to apply clear and seamless animations.
5. Sleep Stories
This category allows users to choose the best story that makes their mind and body calm and relaxed, so they can have a sound sleep.
6. Push Notifications
Push notifications help you connect with all users by keeping them updated. You can recommend users to visit the meditation sessions, send reminders that it’s time for meditating and report on different types of promotions.
7. Seamless Search
Your meditation app should wisely categorize content under various labels that make the procedure of searching the right content easy. Moreover, it should get content in the voice form that attracts users to choose your mindfulness app over your competitors.
8. App Localization
Your meditation app should also spend money on localization. Hence, the app content must be available in different languages, which provides users a choice to get content in their local languages. It increases the chances of engaging more users.
9. Discovery Screen
You can present all meditation sessions and materials on this screen and also display updates and the most famous programs. This screen must provide materials in various categories and have something exclusive always.
10. Play Button
Your app must play a meditation session when a user selects it. Add a noticeable play button and an exquisite background for both photos and audio.
11. Meditation Library
To make your app different from competitors, add thousands of meditation programs to your library. Categorize them and provide sessions to every user as per their suitability.
For every session, you must display how much time it takes, its category, and other data so users can expect what will happen. Your meditation app must incorporate soothing music, bed-time stories, etc.
12. Live Streaming
Every year, many meditation apps release. To make your app different from others, offer users an extra value. Add a live video streaming feature to your meditation app.
You can authorize your app with broadcast-quality live linear stream across Android and iOS devices using cloud CDN, cloud storage, and Google Compute Engine for infrastructures, and Anvato SDK for excellently performing live streaming.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Meditation App like Headspace and Calm?
There is no fixed cost to build a meditation app like Headspace and Calm as it depends on the OS platform, the number of features, the hourly development rate, and the composition of the development team. Nevertheless, you can estimate how long the team will take to create such an app.
To make things easier, here are some factors that are responsible for the varying costs of meditation app development:
- Tech Stack – The tools, programming language, and other technology stack used in your app development impact the cost of building an app like Calm or Headspace.
- Development Team – The experience, expertise, location, and size of the organization you hire are also responsible for the varying costs of building an app like Headspace or Calm.
- App Features & Specifications – The cost value is directly associated with your app complexity and size. Hence, if you want to develop a full-fledged application, you need to have a good budget.
Thereby, the best option to get a precise price of developing a meditation app like Headspace or Calm is to contact the app development company you want to hire.
Closing Text
Presently, the meditation app market is full of apps of various sizes and qualities. In the mean time, Headspace and Calm are the leaders for the entire online meditation industry. To make a successful meditation app, pay heed to its marketing and design. Work with experts in this field for promoting your app on social channels.
To save money on app development and invest in marketing, you can outsource to a location where it doesn’t cost more and never sacrifices quality. Make sure to add the features discussed in this blog to attract your target audience.
FAQs About Meditation App Development
If you have a meditation app idea then you should first validate it with a mobile app development company like Mindinventory. You should cross-verify your idea and ask for scope and cost to develop your app.
Your meditation app must-have some features like registration, sign in, user profile, introductory course, onboarding tutorial, push notifications, search, app localization, meditation library, live streaming, etc.
You can make money from a meditation app in many ways like the subscription model, in-app purchase, advertisements, freemium model, etc.
You might face some challenges while developing a meditation app like maintaining simplicity and speed, localizing app content, transparency, higher subscription rate, etc.
