How to build a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia?

Pregnancy is one of the fulfilling yet anxious times of a woman’s life. There’s a great deal of changes that happen in her mentally and physically – charting through them while being constantly worried about the child’s health. And this is what leads them towards pregnancy tracking apps. Being a part of a market share that is expected to reach USD 257.6 million in 2023, these apps are designed to make the journey towards healthy delivery stress-free.

But what is leading to this glaring rise in the pregnancy tracker market? The primary reason for this can be attributed to the many pregnancy tracking app benefits ranging from tracking the child’s and mother’s health, giving users insights into what to expect during the different stages of pregnancy, frequent reminders around taking medicine, rest, and more. A working example of all these and a lot more pregnancy tracking app benefits can be seen in Ovia, the center focus of our article today.

Established in 2012, Ovia pregnancy tracking app has been a part of over 18+ million family journeys across 200+ countries and territories. A validation of this can be seen in Ovia being one of the most used apps by pregnant women.

The popularity that the brand enjoys at the back of the impact it creates has led to a number of entrepreneurs interested in the pregnancy app development space. This article is for the entrepreneurs who are looking to make a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia, detailing the multiple factors that affect the development process and app cost.

Ovia pregnancy tracking app features

There are a number of useful, smartly built features that define the success of the pregnancy tracking mobile app development efforts. Keeping Ovia as the foundation, let us look into some of the top feature sets.

1. Sign up/Login

The first critical feature of pregnancy tracker app development is the login and sign up experience. Developers usually make use of APIs to enable social media and email based registration and login. This makes it easy for users to enter the application.

1. Home Screen

In the case of Ovia pregnancy tracking app development, the home screen consists of multiple elements – a small overview of what the baby looks like and countdown to the due date, nutrition tips, and blogs around mother’s health and baby’s developmental stages.

1. Calendar

Another crucial factor of pregnancy tracker app development like Ovia is a calendar view. When building the feature it is important to add a facility for adding notes, setting reminders, and entering day-wise data around mood, symptom, activity, medicine intake, exercise, and fetal movement etc.

1. Community

Pregnancy can be an anxious time for any woman. In this scenario it would help to get community support from other pregnant women or others who have been a part of the journey. The way a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia works is through an in-app forum for users to interact with each other.

1. Kick counter and contraction timer

An app similar to Ovia makes it easy for users to track baby’s kicks in real-time and over a day-by-day mode. The app should also come with a contraction timer and record facility where the user can press on the play button when the contraction starts and stop when it ends along with the contraction intensity.

1. Goals

When you build a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia, it can help to create a system using which mothers-to-be can set goals around sleep, ideal weight, workouts, daily steps, nutrition intake, etc. and see the progress in terms of meeting those goals.

Goals are generally attached to reminders which helps users with tracking the progress on a day-to-day level.

1. Insights

Next part of the pregnancy tracking mobile app development is having extensive blogs and resources around different phases and topics around pregnancy and what to expect immediately after a child’s birth.

1. My profile

This part of the app similar to Ovia consists of details around the mother-to-be. It has editable information around height, weight, due date, partner’s details, and the option to sync data from FitBit devices.

1. Customer support

The last must-have pregnancy tracking app features to add is having a 24*7 customer support architecture. In addition, you should also have an in-app chat facility along with the ease to connect through email and call.

These were some of the key must-have features to consider when you develop a pregnancy tracker app like Ovia.

With the features addressed, the next organic step in the process to build an app like Ovia is to answer the step-by-step process of how to build an app like Ovia.

Ovia-like app development process

If you are here reading this chances are you would have already done a rough market study on who the primary and secondary audience is, where you will launch the application, and what would be the business model. All of this covers the first part of the development process – the brainstorming stage.

The next part when you develop a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia is features finalization. At Appinventiv, we typically insist on finalizing the features 80% before starting on the development journey. This gives the designers a good space to discuss and decide where to place a feature and its user journey in the app’s UI/UX.  Now, the features we mentioned above can be taken up as a starting point for your application – one that will keep on getting upgraded with time and market needs.

This brings us to the third stage of pregnancy tracking app development – the UI and UX stage.

Ovia follows a data and information heavy design for their application which can feel overwhelming for first time users

What we recommend is following a minimal design style with dedicated spaces for every element. For example, the home screen can consist of elements like a dashboard view of the fetus’s growth, upcoming appointments or reminders, and a simple positive message for the mother-to-be. Likewise, there can be a card view of blogs in the insights section and a color coded calendar.

Once the design wireframe is ready we move to the coding part of pregnancy tracking app development. Here the elements and user journey defined in the design are made clickable and movement ready. We also integrate high-end technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Business Analytics, and Blockchain at this stage, depending on your business requirement.

This stage also requires finalizing a technology stack that would be scalability and high concurrency friendly.

With the app now ready, we move to the testing stage where we run a QA analysis on the application using multiple testing approaches like automated and manual testing. Here, the focus is on ensuring that the app runs as intended while being 100% secure.

With this attended to, the next step that comes is launching an MVP version of the application to a prospective user base and working on the feedback they give before the official app launch.

Once the development process is well established, the next critical step that comes on the surface is knowing the pregnancy app development cost. Let us answer that in the next section.

How much does it cost to make an app like Ovia?

The pregnancy tracking app development cost when you keep Ovia as the reference point can be anywhere between $25,000 to $80,000.

This range is made up of a number of factors –

• App design
• App features
• Number of platforms the app will be launched on
• Technology inclusion
• Development team structure and geographical location.

It is important to note that this range can change and can even go up to $150,000-$200,000 depending on the complexity and an increase in the above factors. Moreover, it will vary depending on the location of the healthcare app development company. For example, if you partner with an AI app development company from India the average hourly rate will be $30-$50, while the same in the US or UK can be $70-$100.

Another aspect of knowing the cost to create an app like Ovia lies in understanding how you will earn revenue on it to get the invested cost back. Typically, you have these options when you look at monetization.

• Freemium, where the app is free but some features are offered on payment.
• Subscription, where the app works on a monthly or yearly subscription.
• In-app advertisement, where relevant ads are shown and the app owners earn on every ad click.

With almost every critical aspect of Ovia-like pregnancy tracking app development now addressed, let us get down to the one factor that will prepare your business for success – how to be better than Ovia.

How to set your app up to be more successful than Ovia?

There are some glaring turn-offs in Ovia application like its cluttered design having too much information in one screen, learnability requirement for using the calendar part of the application, and a lack of other key features like an in-app eCommerce store, provision to add doctors’ details, etc.

The way you can get a leg up in this regard is two-fold – one on the design end and another through expanding your business model. When you develop a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia, you can keep a minimal design with dedicated sections for every user event and on the other hand, you can create an in-app eCommerce store selling new mother and infants’ essentials.

Another critical part missing in the app is entering doctors’ information and the facility to contact them through the application. This expansion in the business model can open up avenues for you to earn more revenue through the application thus helping you reach the expected ROI sooner.

The last, but very crucial way you can get a leg up in the pregnancy tracking space is by not having weak security practices. Ovia, time and again, has been scrutinized for sharing data with employers and third-party stakeholders like advertisers. Your solution to this can be using blockchain to encrypt the data your users share, making their personal information anonymous and giving them complete control on whom they would like to share the data with and in which capacity.

[Also Read: A pocket guide to healthcare compliances business must follow for security]

How can Appinventiv help as your partnered pregnancy tracking app development company?

There are a number of reasons why entrepreneurs trust us to develop a pregnancy tracking app like Ovia. The topmost one is the fact that we have a proven track record of building women health apps aimed at making care accessible and real-time for women on a global scale. Another reason is how our team of healthcare experts always consult with doctors, legal advocates, and medical stakeholders when building an app which would impact someone’s life.

All of this added with an in-depth understanding of the healthcare app market and healthcare compliances like HIPAA makes us a reliable team for building a pregnancy tracker application.

[Also Read: How to develop a HIPAA-compliant mobile app?]

Experience the Appinventiv benefit yourself. Get in touch with our medical app experts today.

THE AUTHOR

Amardeep Rawat

Co-Founder and Director