FitCoachPro - Client Management Tool
FitCoachPro is an innovative application designed for personal trainers, gym owners, and fitness coaches looking to streamline client management and boost business growth. This is an all-in-one solution offering tools for designing workouts, creating nutrition plans, managing clients, and processing payments.
TEAM
12 members
STARTED IN
2023
FINISHED IN
12 months
COUNTRY
USA
INDUSTRY
Fitness
OVERVIEW
About
the business
We partnered with a client who created an innovative online web and mobile app, for personal trainers, gym owners, and fitness coaches called FitCoachPro. The client wanted to transform it into an all-in-one solution that could help fitness professionals streamline client management and improve productivity.
FitCoachPro was developed 8 years ago to support fitness professionals in managing an increasing client base while maintaining quality service and fostering client engagement. But unfortunately, it had outdated UI/UX design, limited functionality, poor personalization, and legacy code problems. The platform infrastructure with time faced major scalability issues, performance bottlenecks, and the legacy code became too difficult to maintain and update.
So the client came to our team with the request to shift platform to newer technologies, to redesign and enhance it, ensuring that it is scalable and future-proof. The goal was to make FitCoachPro serve the needs of fitness professionals and their clients better by offering truly personalized and impactful fitness experiences.
OVERVIEW
Project tasks
and challenges
Our cooperation with the client started with an in-depth app audit and the creation of a new roadmap. During the audit, we discovered several critical issues that should be addressed:
- Outdated UI/UX: The app suffered from an outdated user interfaces and poor user experience, making it difficult for both trainers and clients to onboard, navigate and find important features.
- Limited Functionality and Customization: The app lacked many essential features such as custom branding options, integration with wearable devices, and robust client communication tools.
- Legacy Code Problems: The app faced issues like tightly coupled code, lack of documentation, obsolete technologies, and poor performance due to outdated infrastructure.
Keeping all these issues in mind, we set the following tasks:
- perform a complete UI/UX redesign following market and industry-specific trends;
- develop new advanced features;
- perform integration with Apple Health, Google Fit, and Fitbit;
- test the product with real users and gather their feedback.
FitCoachPro. Interfaces
OVERVIEW
Project team
• Project Manager
• Business Analyst
• 2 UX/UI Designer
• 3 Front-end Developers
• 2 Back-end Developers
• 2 QA engineers
• Solution Architect
5
months for
audit & redesign
7
months for
development & testing
React.js
Node.js
Express.js
React Native
PostgresQL
AWS
PLATFORM FEATURES
Progress checking
We integrated this feature to empower both - users and trainers to track fitness achievements in real-time.
- Users can easily set personalized daily goals (i.e completing a specific workout or sticking to a nutrition plan) and log their progress directly within the app. This feature calculates key metrics like consulmed and burned calories, macronutrients intake, and overall activity level.
- Trainers can monitor client achievements and celebrate milestones, and make data-driven adjustments to workout or nutrition plans to keep clients on track and help them achieve desired goals.
FitCoachPro. Progress check
PLATFORM FEATURES
Customization
The request of our client was to enhance customization in FitCoachPro app and allow trainers to reflect their own brand. So we added tools helping to easily replace the FitCoachPro logo with the trainers own one, making the experience more personal and professional for their clients.
Trainers can also select different app themes, create a custom app icon, and even publish their personalized version of the app on the app store. Customization allows trainers to align the app with their unique brand identity, providing a cohesive and professional touch to the client experience.
PLATFORM FEATURES
Client management
The app enables personal trainers to manage unlimited clients, track their progress with photos, and store client notes securely. It also includes PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire) forms for collecting necessary medical information
FitCoachPro equips personal trainers with tools to manage an unlimited number of clients. Trainers can securely track client progress using photo comparisons, store detailed notes, and access essential health information through PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire) forms. This helps to ensure that trainers have a clear view of each client’s physical form and medical history before planning workouts.
We also integrated chat option for seamless communication of trainers with clients, allowing to provide better support and guidance.
FitCoachPro. Client management
PLATFORM FEATURES
Wearable device compatibility
Previous version of FitCoachPro lacked integration with key health-tracking apps like Apple Health, FitBit, and Google Fit limiting the depth of client health and activity insights available to trainers.
Now, with seamless integration with the mentioned apps, trainers can access precise data on their clients activity level. This helps to adjust training and nutrition plan according to each client’s physical abilities, health habits, and specific goals.
PLATFORM FEATURES
Calendar bookings
FitCoachProp has a scheduling tool where clients can book one-on-one sessions with trainers or join group classes. They can easily check trainers calendar, join waiting lists for fully booked classes, and set up reminders not to miss a scheduled class.
Trainers can sync their calendar with popular systems like Google Calendar, and check out list of booked clients, waiting list, and all available time slots to avoid double-booking and keep everything organized in one place.
FitCoachPro. Calendar bookings
PLATFORM FEATURES
Workout builder
FitCoachPro empowers trainers to create fully personalized workout plans using a library of over 1,500 HD video exercises. Trainers can tailor each workout by specifying number of reps and sets, weight, and rest times between exercises.
These workouts can be customized for both individual clients and group sessions, allowing trainers to meet the specific needs and goals of each client. Additionally, trainers have the option to use editable templates to streamline the personal program creation.
FitCoachPro. Workout builder
PLATFORM FEATURES
Other features
Nutrition coaching
FitCoachPro allows trainers to create detailed meal plans for clients using a database of over 1000 verified food items. Trainers can set calorie and macro goals, and even create custom meals, which clients can log and track.
Wearable integrations
FitCoachPro integrates with Apple Health, Google Fit, and Fitbit, allowing trainers to track real-time health data like calories they burned, their walking and running distance.
Payments
Trainers can process payments directly through the app, either as one-time payments or through subscriptions for their fitness packages. The platform integrates with Stripe for seamless financial management.
Habit coaching
Trainers can support clients in forming new habits through customized coaching and progress tracking. This feature is designed to keep clients engaged in their fitness journey.
Client communication
The app has a built-in chat feature that allows trainers to communicate with their clients. Trainers can create single or group chats, and broadcast important messages.
Templates
FitCoachPro comes with a wide variety of pre-built workout and nutrition templates, which can be easily customized to meet client needs, saving trainers time on planning.
PROJECT JOURNEY
Development approach
FitCoachPro application was initially built around 8 years ago, using technologies that were popular at the time but are now outdated. Here is the legacy tech stack that was used:
- The frontend was built using jQuery and Backbone.js, which are lightweight frameworks but offer limited scalability and performance for modern web applications.
- The backend was developed with PHP (likely using a framework like CodeIgniter or Laravel), which worked well in the early stages but presented issues with scalability and modern API integrations.
- A MySQL database was used, but without modern optimization techniques like database sharding or caching.
- The mobile apps were developed natively using Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. These technologies required separate codebases, increasing development effort and maintenance costs.
All of the selected technologies introduced several challenges:
- Lack of flexibility: jQuery and Backbone.js made it difficult to build dynamic, reactive UIs, and the code became increasingly difficult to maintain.
- Scalability issues: As the user base grew, PHP’s synchronous nature and the limitations of the tech stack caused performance bottlenecks, with slow load times and frequent server downtimes.
- Inability to easily add new features: The monolithic code structure hindered the addition of new features, making it difficult to meet modern user expectations for customization and real-time communication.
To address these challenges, we recommended a complete overhaul of the tech stack. The new proposed stack was built with scalability, flexibility, and maintainability in mind:
- Frontend: We selected React for the web application. React is a modern, component-based JavaScript library that allows for the creation of dynamic and responsive user interfaces. Its virtual DOM significantly improves performance compared to older frameworks like Backbone.js.
- Backend: We suggested moving to Node.js with Express.js. Node.js, with its event-driven, non-blocking architecture, allows for better scalability and performance, especially for real-time applications like client communication and data synchronization.
- Mobile App: For the mobile apps, we recommended using React Native to replace the separate native apps. React Native allows for a shared codebase across both iOS and Android platforms, reducing development time and costs while maintaining high performance and a native-like user experience.
- Database: To modernize the database layer, we suggested upgrading to PostgreSQL for enhanced performance with complex queries, and integrating caching solutions like Redis to reduce load times and improve data access efficiency.
- Cloud Infrastructure: We proposed using AWS or Google Cloud for scalable cloud infrastructure, including serverless options like AWS Lambda to handle burst traffic more efficiently.
Benefits of the new tech stack that we selected:
- React and Node.js ensure faster load times, better response rates, and more efficient handling of user interactions compared to the legacy PHP and jQuery-based solution.
- Node.js allows the backend to handle concurrent requests efficiently, making it easier to scale the platform as FitCoachPro’s user base grows. The use of React Native also means easier app scalability across mobile platforms.
- By adopting React Native, we unified the mobile development process, eliminating the need for separate native app development for iOS and Android. This reduces ongoing maintenance and allows for faster feature releases.
- React’s component-based architecture allows for more flexibility in creating custom themes and branding options, which was a core requirement for FitCoachPro.