Meditation App Development Company

Today, the world needs more peace and spiritual awakening when the times are tough and considering the COVID havoc. And highly advanced technology has made it possible to attain peace easily as well. Apart from entertainment and worldly needs, it also has the potential to nourish our soul. Yes, this is regarding meditation. Meditation apps are coming up gradually, and they're already famous ones out there like calm, Headspace, and others.

People prefer to meditate to get some peace while they can. They want a break from their busy schedule and chores and need some serenity in their life. Meditation can play a significant role in whether they prefer deep breathing or guided meditation to relax their minds. Hence, tons of people practice meditation daily using some top meditation apps.

Top meditation apps like Calm have created a massive buzz around the world, raising $27 million in the company's latest financial round at $250 million. Moreover, Calm, the meditation startup, shifts to physical retail funding $3 million to become one of the vast Nasdaq-listed airport spa operator XpresSpa.

This article is for those entrepreneurs or mobile app developers who want to develop a meditation app like Calm or Headspace.

Essential Features for your Meditation App

1. Visual Design
People use meditation apps to feel relaxed and calm, and because colors affect our perception of how we see things and mood, it is essential to use colors in the right way when you develop a meditation app.

Many popular meditation apps have used pastel colors if you notice. Meditation app like Calm have used colors like blue and green, while Headspace has used pale blues, greens, yellows, and mild oranges. Violent colors like red are hardly seen in meditation apps.  Visuals you use have a profound impact on the user's mind and mood. Hence, choose your colors wisely.

2.  Onboarding
Onboarding is a very significant part of user experience in mindfulness apps, mainly if your apps are for newbies. Many individuals install the app with a doubtful approach to stick to it for a more extended period. To make them stay, you need to design an engaging onboarding that is appealing to the eye and attention-grabbing.

For instance, tell a story, display a short video, and explain what meditation is and what you are delivering them to first-time users. Make it engaging, interactive, but simple to understand.

Alert: Do not make too long introductory videos; it should ideally range between 60-90 secs. Also, demos shouldn’t be longer than 5 minutes, or else the users will lose their interest.

3. Register
Users have an alternative to register via social media networks in addition to email. Signing up with a social media account is quicker, and there is no requirement to remember one more password.

4. User profiles
Users need a place to instantly access essential information regarding their subscription plans, the history of their recent meditations, progress, etc. Gamification elements such as active user bonuses, leaderboards, also need to be easily accessible.

5. Player
An instructor’s voice typically guides meditation in the real-world and apps. So, you’ll need a media playback function at the core of your app. A good player will support superior-quality video or audio.

6. Content Library
Typically, guided meditation is done in the form of podcasts; videos can be used for fitness or yoga-supporting meditations. Meditation recordings must be of superior quality and recorded with professional equipment. Low-grade content will discourage users from your product.

The library should be discoverable and organized. Many meditation apps catalog meditations by the aim: for anxiety, for sleep, for calmness, for positivity, guided meditation for beginners, and many more. It’s a simple way to list recordings. But, you can also make your own listings or playlists. The essential thing is to describe your system to users.

7. Favorite Track
Some tracks will work better than others for users. This is natural with practice as personal as mindfulness. Enable users to bookmark their favorite tracks to let them come back to them when they wish to.

8. Offline Playback
Users appreciate the option to download tracks and play them when they want to in the offline mode. This helps especially when you are commuting and need a short meditation session.

9.  Recommendations
For a customized and personalized experience, think of applying machine learning when you develop a meditation app such as Calm or Headspace. Artificial Intelligence can help your app evaluate the meditations every user hears and suggest similar ones by purpose, theme, or narrator.

10. Gamification
This is one of the best ways to keep the users engrossed in an app. Everyone is somewhat competitive, and some like to compete with others. You can test an A/B test with your target audience to know what gamification elements they prefer.

11. Trackers and Statistics
If you plan to develop a meditation app focusing on weight loss, eating disorders, fighting depression, you’ll need tracks. Design your app to ask users about their moods, or allow them to track their weight correctly in the app if that’s connected to their meditation goals. Trackers and statistics will enable users to see patterns and work on accomplishing their goals.

12. Push Notifications
Most people do need reminders when they are forming a new habit, including meditation. Push notifications seem like a solution to this. They are not as intrusive as alarms yet get noticed instantly.

Whereas, when it comes to any mobile app reminders, it is essential not to go overboard. Your users need not be reminded to meditate every hour. It will look like you are bugging them, and that can be annoying. Meditation is a personal habit; hence it is best to set a tailored reminder. It should be the users choice when they want to meditate and when do they want to get notified.

13. Wearables Integration
Several apps have an option to send notifications to fitness trackers and smartwatches. When it comes to mindfulness, you can extend further to allow users to start breathing exercises without using their smartphone with the help of wearable tech.

Cost to Develop a Meditation App

These are the things to consider when you determine the cost of your meditation app development.

1) Experience of the development team
2) Cost of servers
3) Maintenance and support
4) Location
5) Features

The mobile apps such as Headspace or Calm can take at least 3-4 months to develop depending on your team size and if everything goes as per plan. The time needed will get affected by the intricacy of features, the complexity of the design, and the number of experts involved. The development cost can range somewhere between $20,000 to $50,000. However, including additional features with intricate technology can increase the range.

Conclusion

The meditation app market has been prospering for the past decade. However, this year considering the pandemic and the stress levels across the globe, there has been a boom in using such apps. This indicates that meditation apps have a huge market and will only grow further.