14 Essential Features for Your Health and Wellness App

Whether you’re creating a new health and wellness app for your business or looking for ways to enhance your existing wellness app, focusing on the features is the best place to start.

The cool part about modern no-code app development is that new features can be added with a single click. If you’re using a robust app builder like Buildfire, your wellness app can have as many of these features as you choose.

All of the functionality below is extremely versatile and works equally well for spas, health clinics, rehab facilities, physical therapists—essentially any business in the health and wellness space.

Key Takeaways

• Automate Operations: Use appointment booking and digital intake forms to reduce administrative friction and manual data entry.
• Increase Engagement: Drive daily app usage through on-demand video content, activity tracking, and gamified leaderboards.
• Enhance Communication: Foster a sense of community and provide direct support via secure in-app messaging and community boards.
• Drive Revenue: Unlock new income streams with tiered loyalty rewards and premium digital subscriptions.
• Streamline Management: Use an internal employee portal to handle training, HR documents, and feedback in one mobile location.

1. Appointment Booking

Every client or patient should be able to book an appointment from your app in just a few clicks. You can add this feature for both in-person sessions and virtual appointments. 

This eliminates all friction associated with appointments booked over the phone. Users can book 24/7 from the app and will see availability in real-time instead of only being able to schedule during business through a receptionist who has to verbally convey available slots.

Not only is this much more efficient for your team internally, but it’s what your clients prefer. 

If you’re running a spa, clients can book their treatment type, select a massage therapist, add on extras or upsells, and pick a time that’s convenient for them—all in less than 30 seconds. 

You can even set up this appointment booking feature to require deposits or prepayments in an effort to reduce no-shows. Cancellations and rescheduling can be handled through the app as well.

2. Secure Document Exchange

Waiting for people to fill out paper forms in person prior to an appointment is a waste of everyone’s time. Beyond the extra time spent in the waiting room, now your staff has to keep hard copies organized or manually re-enter all of the information into your digital database.

Using your wellness app to manage intake forms is far more efficient, and you can even automate this process.

Whenever a new appointment is booked, you can automatically send any required forms to the user. They can fill out those documents prior to arrival, providing a smoother experience while eliminating duplicate work for your office staff.

Intake forms are just scratching the surface of how you can leverage this feature.

Doctors can share test results with patients 24/7 through a secure document manager. Chiropractors can upload posture assessments and x-ray comparisons. Physical therapists can share personalized recovery documents aligned with their patient’s treatments. 

Essentially, any document or form that would normally be exchanged via email, fax, or in-person can be digitized and handled through your wellness app. The possibilities are limitless here.

3. On-Demand Videos

Adding a video library to your wellness app is an excellent way to drive engagement when users are outside of your facilities. 

Even your best customers may only have an appointment once or twice per month. But by providing them with additional resources to access 24/7, they can become daily app users.

The video content obviously depends on the type of wellness facility you’re running. Spas may focus on videos related to guided meditation and breathwork, while physical therapists and centers can share exercise tutorials to help patients recover from injury.

You can also set up your videos to be accessible from the app in offline mode—making it easy for users to access content when they’re not connected to Wi-Fi.

Best of all, adding this feature to your app is a breeze. You can simply install a YouTube plugin or Vimeo plugin to connect your channel, and then select which videos to include in your app. It’s easy to set up folders of videos by category, create playlists, and hide premium videos behind a subscription-based paywall. 

4. Location-Based Services

If you’re running a multi-location health and wellness business, you can add a feature to your app that directs people to the closest office.

The app and all of its primary functions will be available for all users. But each individual location can have its own page or space in the app that contains location-specific details—like address, phone number, and operating hours. 

This can also help clients plan for their upcoming visit.

For example, one spa location may have a sauna and a steam room, while other locations just have a sauna. One location may have a full lap pool and jacuzzi on-site, and another may offer cold plunges and cryotherapy. 

A physical therapist may want to warn patients of a parking fee and provide clear directions on how to find the office upon arrival. 

These extra touches really improve the overall user experience at multiple touches—when they’re browning for information, booking an appointment, and when they arrive. 

5. Goal Setting

Each person who uses a health and wellness app wants to better themselves in one way or another. Everyone’s goals are different, but the app can serve as the common ground to help achieve them.

You can trigger the goal-setting prompt either immediately after a download or potentially wait until after you’ve met with the client for an appointment. It all depends on your business and how you want to provide care.

This could be a simple push notification that asks how they’re feeling or reminds them to take a deep breath. Or you could ask them to log workouts and weight loss progress. 

But once a goal has been established in the app, you can follow up with daily check-ins to keep people coming back and on pace for their goals.

6. Activity Tracking

This feature is a must-have for dietitians, nutritionists, trainers, therapists, and physicians who want to provide more personalized client care. 

You can set up a feature in the app that lets users track different activities like daily water intake, miles walked, meals, and more. A simple checkbox for something like “meditation” or “yoga” being marked for completion each day can also work.

This can be even more specific to your practice and customized in any way that you see fit.

Adding this feature to your wellness app accomplishes two things simultaneously. First, it incentivizes users to open your app and stay engaged multiple times per day. But more importantly, it also helps hold them accountable and keeps them on track for their aforementioned goals. 

7. In-App Messaging

Adding a secure chat feature to your wellness app is a simple and highly effective way for users to quickly ask questions and help without forcing them to call your office or submit a generic online form.

Some users may just ask basic questions related to your services, and you might get some “Are you open today?” questions on a holiday. Others might use it to let you know they’re running late for an appointment.

Some health and wellness businesses take this feature a step further by using it to provide patient care.

For example, a patient in physical therapy might have some questions while they’re doing exercises at home. The in-app messaging feature is a quick way for them to ask their therapist a question. 

8. Gamification

Gamification features are often overlooked in the health and wellness app category. But this is an excellent way to drive engagement and keep people on track with their goals.

There are tons of different ways to set this up. Ultimately, you just want some type of system that rewards winners of different “games” on a weekly or monthly basis.

For example, here’s how Renaissance Ranch added gamification features to their rehabilitation app. Users earned point

Gone are the days when you need to hire developers and spend months developing new features for your app. Thanks to modern tools like Buildfire, you can install any of these features to your app in a matter of minutes thanks to our extensive plugin marketplace—and you’ll never have to write a line of code.

Creating a mobile app for your health and wellness business will give you an edge over your competitors and improve the client experience. And since Buildfire is so affordable, you’ll generate revenue with a high ROI almost instantly.

Sign up for your 30-day free trial of Buildfire today to get started. If you need more support and have questions about how to create a wellness app, book a demo to connect with a Buildfire app expert.

Frequently Asked Questions