Today I launched FitLabs, my first web product

http://www.fitlabs.co/blog/fitlabs-launch/

by physcab • 15 years ago

14 10 15 years ago

sidcool2• 15 years ago

I am impressed with the UI. It's fast. Great work. What technologies have you used?

physcab3• 15 years ago

Thanks. I'm not a designer so for right now I got an awesome theme off WooThemes. The product itself is a theme off of ThemeForest.

The front end is Javascript MVC and Jquery. Backend is PHP and MySQL. Payments are done by Stripe (more on that in a later post). Charting is done with Highcharts and a custom data API, and I'll prob move to d3.js once I figure out some more visualizations to put in.

sidcool2• 15 years ago

How big a team was involved in the build? Just the build, not the testing team. I am thoroughly impressed by the effort. I would surely like to use the service...

byoung2• 15 years ago

This is like the software side of an idea I had maybe a decade ago. My idea would be to modify workout machines with sensors. Think of those Nautilus type pulley machines. You would swipe your card (magstripe, RFID, barcode, etc) when you sit down (start time recorded). Then you select the weight you want to lift (weight setting recorded). As you lift, various sensors would record the time per rep, range of motion, speed, etc. The idea would be that you don't have to waste time writing in a log, and the computer could capture data that you couldn't (like the fact that your last 4 reps only had 85% extension, vs your first 2 which had 98%). With sensors on all the machines in a typical gym (weight machines, treadmills, elliptical, etc.), you could get a full picture of how your workout went. Plus you could see how you progress over time. The challenge would be to get a big gym to allow you to wire up all of their machines, or work with a manufacturer to get them to include these sensors.

networkjester• 15 years ago

Made me think of this:

http://www.telemetryweb.com/display/PUB/TelemetryWeb+-+The+C...

Could be a good combination.

ta3892682334• 15 years ago

FWIW: I think having a user create an account is kinda useless if you don't give access to all the features (specifically graphing). My recommendation would be to setup a demo account with seeded data so people can get a feel for the service.

Also I may take heat for this but for me personally that price point is too high. I'm not saying you should lower it but I wouldn't purchase the service based on that alone (at least not in it's current form).

There you go two cents from a random stranger. I hope it's helpful and wish you the best of luck.

physcab3• 15 years ago

Thanks. Feedback is definitely noted!

BrandonMTurner• 15 years ago

It looks pretty good and it rather snappy UI.

I don't fully understand what makes this better/different then DailyBurn.

I would be interested to know what kind of conversion rate you have at 10 dollars a month. A lot of fitness tracking / and calorie counters have turned into a commodity to users I feel like. Selling things to gym and trainers seems like it is very hard from what experienced for a few reasons (most notably, they make little money and they are not interested upselling their customers unless it somehow directly results in them getting leads for doing more personal training sessions).

A couple quick notes / suggestions:

1) Adding connections to Facebook / Twitter / or internal social networkings will only result in a win for you. We see this very clearly with Lose It! (the product I work on)

2) When clicking on top level nav items that only have one subsection (Notes and Program) it should auto-select (ie. navigate) to the subsection. Otherwise it is just 2 steps to get everywhere.

3) The visualizations are not that compelling which I think is a combination of 2 factors. First, they are simply line graphs of numbers the user has manually entered. There is no depth / substance to the graphs. Moreover, in the demo there is so few data points it really amplies how shallow they are.

4) Ont he goals tab there is a lot of data and I don't really follow what is showing. Perhaps since I am not a avid weight lifter myself. There is also switching between different date formatting in that chart and there looks like there is some kind of escaping bug where it says \"Christine\"

5) Under Strength tab when you click into the textbox for "Reps Until Failure" the text from "Click to Enter" does not clear. Seems like that is would get very annoying.

6) If you are going to expect users to enter so much data manually I suggest also adding a data export feature and also create nice looking printable summaries of their progress.

Anyways, it looks good. Excellent work on launching, thats always the hardest part. I wish you the best luck and welcome to the health and fitness industry.

physcab3• 15 years ago

Thanks! Great feedback. I'm actually currently testing between multiple price points. I had a higher price point but a lot of my testers said it was way too much, so I'm lowering it and seeing what effect it has on my conversions.

Right now there is not much differentiation between this and other fitness tracking apps. Its specifically catered to Crossfit athletes though. I do have some ideas for making the graphs more revealing. I also want to connect workouts to nutrition much better other than just listing stats. We'll see...lots of experimentation to do!

custominstall• 15 years ago

Can you add medals similar to wii fit, pc games and foursquare? This might add to the fun factor and help in people feeling more like they have achieved something.

So the more you use the better you do the more medals you get. Then people can show off their workout stats and medals on their blogs.

Today I launched FitLabs, my first web product

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