Meditation App Development: Using examples like Headspace or Calm

One of the biggest advantages of mobile apps is that anyone, anywhere, can use them. While most traditional offline businesses faced new challenges, companies focused on mobile devices found a new opportunity for growth and scalability.

Today, apps focused on mental health, particularly those aimed at corporate wellness app development, continue to maintain their popularity, as confirmed by recent studies from Statista:

• The Meditation Apps industry value will amount to US$4.43 bn by 2023. The market is projected to increase at a CAGR rate of 9.83% from 2023 to 2028 and reach $7.08 billion in 2028.
• In 2023, user penetration stands at 2.85%.
• This market is anticipated to have an Average Revenue Per User of US$46.31.
• US is set to lead with revenues amounting to US$940.30m in 2023.

The growth indicators in the meditation app market are indeed impressive. In addition to this, the popularity of such applications positively influences the practice mindfulness and well-being worldwide.

It likely wasn’t the most obvious decision for a guy who spent a decade device-free and was pretty skeptical about modern technologies. However, the app was their ticket to reaching millions. Moreover, it was something fresh and unique back then.

They didn’t have that much in the very beginning — around $50,000 from their friends and family. Taking into account that they couldn't be 100% sure that their idea will be profitable or at least won't go into the red, it's not a big amount of money.

The first version of the Headspace app was quite different from what we can download now. Actually, it was a set of 365 meditation sessions — all are recorded and voiced by Andy Puddicombe.

Lesson # 1: It’s possible to create a successful app without enormous spendings.

The company scaled gradually. In 2014 (4 years after the launch), they started to add tailored “packs” on specific topics like stress, sleep, sports, relationships, focus, and others.

Also, they’ve modified sessions for different levels of complexity: starting from sets for kids to tracks for experienced meditators.

Lesson # 2: start a meditation app with an MVP (minimum viable product, when implementing only essential features first) and then scale gradually.

Eventually, they managed to develop a meditation app with a wide user base that included both males and females ages 18 to 70 in over 200 countries. Impressive, isn’t it?

Today the Headspace app has over 70 million downloads and 3.3 million paying subscribers. The annual revenue is approximately $235 million in 2022. It proves that mindfulness app development can be a great choice from the business perspective as well.

Here are a few tips to follow:

• Try not to reveal all the features at once. Onboarding should highlight only the most important features and help users to discover the app’s main possibilities. Additional features may be explained later, as soon as users reach them.
• Headspace uses a one-minute-long animated video to introduce the app to its users. This may be a good solution for you, too!

Specific Design: calm and smooth 🎨

Meditation practices are all about making you calm and concentrated. So, the design of your app should contribute to this goal as well.
Firstly, don’t use colors that are too bright. Some of the best choices can be:

• Blue.
• Green.
• Yellow.
• Brown.
• Purple.
• Pink.

These are the colors that mainly used in Headspace and Calm apps, so if you want to create a mindfulness app like Calm, stick to this palette.

Secondly, make sure your design doesn’t look too cluttered. Actually, this is the golden rule for any kind of mobile application, not just for apps like Headspace.

If you take a look at the most popular relaxation meditation apps, you will see that they usually have a very minimalistic design - just the list with their available sessions and no excessive navigation elements. Thus, the application is more content-centered and not that distracting.

Thirdly, take care of animations. They should be smooth and quite plain. Your aim here is not to impress users with some complicated design features but to create a specific mood, a sense of relaxation that will help to catch the right vibe and get the best after-effect from your meditation sessions.

< LUNSegmentedControl developed by our Stormotion team is a great example of such a smooth animation. It can be used in apps like Calm to move between different tabs of screens.

Profiles: all about personalization 👤

Personalization is an essential part of any mobile application but if you want to create a meditation app like Headspace it’s particularly important for your project.

Here are 2 main reasons why you should care:

• Everyone has their motivation to meditate.

There are plenty of reasons why people start meditating in the first place. Some see it as a 10-minute break in the middle of a working day that helps to rest and clear the mind. For others, meditation may be key to a better sleeping schedule or a more efficient way of fighting stress, fear and depression.

Profiles provide users with a tailored experience according to their preferences. By using machine learning algorithms your mindfulness meditation app can analyze what session a user has already listened to and offer them similar sets to improve their experience. Sounds complicated, right? In reality — it isn’t. Check out the link to find out more.

• Gamification makes users more involved.

Yet, profiles can bring you more benefit from the business perspective as well.

For example, the Headspace app has its own achievement system — users can get badges for completing sessions 1, 3, 10, 15, 30, 90, 180 and 365 days in a row. The desire to keep up with the score makes them visit the Headspace app on a daily basis, thus, increasing retention and KPIs as well as eventually, getting more involved and purchasing a paid subscription.

Many people find themselves looking forward to progressing in the application and reaching new milestones, so feel free to use it to your advantage during your meditation app development services!

Meditation Session Sets: the heart of your app 🎧

The app feature we are going to talk about now is definitely the most important one if you want to develop a mindfulness app. So, what should you know about it?

Meditation sessions are made in the form of podcasts. These are conversations on selected topics, combined with background calming music or nature sound effects. The duration of such sessions isn’t limited, but the generally accepted format is a recording of 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes long. However, longer options (45 or 60 minutes) are also possible.

Mental health app development principles can guide the creation of session content tailored to stress management and resilience building.

As we’ve already said, everyone has their personal reasons for meditating. One of the pillars of Headspace’s success, as we learned it earlier, is that they’ve managed to offer valuable content to people of different sex, age and needs. We'd recommend taking that into account when you create your own meditation app.

At the app MVP stage, it’s possible to create a single pack (or a few ones) to introduce users to meditation techniques and cover a few basic topics like stress, concentration and sleep patterns.

Yet, as your user base will grow and scale, adding new session sets or improving the previous ones will become one of the most important tasks for you.

Play Screen: let your users relax ▶️

This screen is one of the most important in mindfulness apps. It also has a pretty plain and minimalistic design. The central part is usually occupied by a “play” button with smooth animation, to create a specific mood for their session.

Also, don’t forget to place a nice background image. The best options to go are some beautiful landscapes with soft green and blue colors or gradients with warm colors.

Finally, you may also add some background music. Yet, it’s not obligatory. For example, the Headspace meditation app has only Andy Puddicombe’s voice talking to you while the Calm app enhances sessions with nature sounds.

Furthermore, we want to share with you a few ideas regarding additional functionality that you can implement:

• Download and cache sessions in order to listen to them later, when internet connection is missing.
• Listen to podcasts in the background, after leaving the app.

Discovery Screen: let users explore the app on their own 🕵️‍♀️

To keep users engaged with your app you need them to check it at least once a day. And nothing can motivate them to do it as much as the discovery option.

Basically, this is a separate screen where users can explore new meditation packs, sessions and other valuable content.

Providing a few free trial sessions (considering that packs usually have 10-30 sessions) can have a positive after-effect for your business. Users will be more likely to buy a pack or a subscription after they get a chance to experience locked sessions on their own for free.

Push Notifications: keep the audience engaged 🔔

Finally, don’t forget to integrate push notifications when you create a mindfulness app. It’s a powerful retargeting tool that will help you to keep the users near your app.

Here are a few ideas on how you can use smart notifications in apps like Headspace:

• Simply remind users to visit your app and have another meditation session according to their schedule (users usually listen to 1 podcast a day).
• Notify when new packs are available or the old ones are extended.
• Announce discounts, giveaways and other news that may encourage people to buy paid packs or subscribe.
• Don’t forget about the gamification element! Remind users to keep their score high and use the app every day.

So, these were the top app features that you will need to create a meditation app like Calm. Remember, to enhance user engagement, it's crucial to analyze user behavior and tailor the app's features accordingly. Earlier we also mentioned that the meditation app development doesn’t require as many financial resources as you might think. So, in the next section we'll talk about the cost to build a meditation app.

Note: we took an average rate of $50/hour but it depends on many different factors so don't think of it as the final price.

This block of our article was about spending money. But what about earning it? Read on, cause we have something to share with you on this topic too.

Planning and Strategy

Outline your business idea, including the problems your application solves, target audience, market and competitor research, functionality, design ideas, and promotion strategy.

Also, plan your meditation app development process. You can hire a team of developers, and they will help you decide on the platform (iOS, Android, or cross-platform), operating system and the possibility of adding special features. Also, don't forget to plan your app's monetization strategy (e.g., subscriptions, in-app purchases, advertising).

Design and User Experience

We now proceed directly to the creation of the application. To start, you need to design the architecture of the application and develop the design. Since this is a meditation application, we advise not to use bright colors in the design. Also, in this matter, it is better to give preference to minimalism, do not overload the screens with unnecessary text, fancy and bold fonts, etc.

Development and Architecture

Choose the right technology stack. We at Stormotion prefer to work on React Native, as this platform allows the creation of applications simultaneously on iOS and Android, which significantly saves development time and money for our clients.

First of all, develop the main functions of the application, such as login/registration, search, progress tracking, in-app payments, and user profiles.

App Deployment and Marketing

After the meditation app development is completed, thoroughly test the application for functionality, usability, and performance. Deploy the application on the appropriate platforms (App Store, Google Play Store). Start implementing the marketing strategy.

Ongoing Maintenance and Updates

Regularly update the application with new features and content. Monitor user feedback and analytics to continually improve the application. Maintain transparency and interact with the user community for sustainable growth.