Many health and wellness businesses provide fitness trackers for their users. If you operate a gym or a similar business, integrating a fitness tracker on your website can enhance user engagement and contribute to your business growth.
This feature enhances user interaction, allows you to gather valuable data for new insights, and fosters a sense of community among your audience.
At CanadaCreate, we offer a range of free business tools for our users, so we recognize the significance of providing interactive tools that meet your audience’s needs.
In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a fitness tracker in WordPress to enhance user engagement on your website.
What Is a Fitness Tracker?
A fitness tracker is an online tool designed to help users monitor various aspects of their health and fitness performance.
This could include a weight loss tracker, a BMI calculator, a meal planner, or other types of health trackers. These online tools can be developed using no-code WordPress plugins that perform calculations in real-time.
Reasons to Add a Fitness Tracker to Your WordPress Site
If you manage a WordPress website for a health and fitness business or an online community, incorporating a fitness tracker is a straightforward way to enhance user engagement.
This includes websites such as:
- Fitness center websites
- Weight loss platforms
- Personal trainer websites
- Nutrition blogs or food-related sites
- Health and fitness communities
- Lifestyle-focused communities
- and more
You can equip your users with effective tools to monitor their fitness progress, which encourages them to stay on your site longer.
Enhanced user engagement results in increased conversion rates and improved customer loyalty for your business.
Creating an Online Fitness Community
One of the simplest ways to monetize a health and fitness website is by establishing a membership site using MemberPress. This user-friendly plugin enables you to offer online courses and subscription services.
We have personally utilized it to develop free courses for our audience, and we highly recommend it. To find out more, check out our MemberPress review.
You can design various fitness plans, restrict access to members-only content with a paywall, create online courses, and much more.
Users can utilize your integrated fitness tracker to assess their performance and track their progress over time. This encourages them to spend more time on your website, which can enhance subscription renewals, upselling opportunities, and customer loyalty.
For comprehensive instructions, check out our detailed tutorial on building a membership website using WordPress.
How to Create an Online Fitness Tracker in WordPress
To set up an online fitness tracker in WordPress, you will need the Formidable Forms plugin, which enables you to create sophisticated forms and calculators for your site.
Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with other tools you may already be using, such as MemberPress, WooCommerce, or your email marketing service.
We have rigorously tested this tool and found that its intuitive drag-and-drop builder allows you to design fitness tracking forms effortlessly, without any coding skills. For more information, check out our review of Formidable Forms.
Begin by installing and activating the Formidable Forms plugin. For detailed instructions, refer to our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
Important Note: There is a free version of the plugin called Formidable Lite, but you will need the premium version to access additional features.
Once activated, navigate to the Formidable » Global Settings page to input your plugin license key, which can be found in your account on the Formidable Forms website.
Next, go to the Formidable » Forms page.
To begin, click the ‘Add New’ button to set up your fitness tracking form.
You will then be prompted to select a template for your form.
There are various templates available, but for this guide, we will start with a blank form.
Next, enter a name and description for your form, then click the ‘Create’ button.
This action will open the Formidable Forms drag-and-drop builder. On the left side, you’ll find a list of form fields you can add.
On the right side, you will see a preview of your form. Since we are starting with a blank form, the preview will not display any fields yet.
Let’s enhance our form by adding the necessary fields for our weight loss fitness tracker.
For this tracker, we will include the following form fields.
- User ID – This field will be automatically populated by Formidable Forms for logged-in users, allowing them to view their own progress.
- Date – Users will input the date they recorded their weight.
- Number – We will rename this field to ‘Weight’ and prompt users to enter their weight in pounds or kilograms.
After adding the fields, simply click on a field to modify its properties.
For example, we modified the number field to label it as ‘Weight’ and included instructions in the description field.
After completing your form edits, click the ‘Update’ button to save your changes.
Integrating the Fitness Tracker into a WordPress Post or Page
Next, you’ll want to incorporate the fitness tracker form into your WordPress site.
If you’re using MemberPress, you can easily edit the ‘Account’ page or create a new page restricted to members only. This ensures that users must log in to submit their fitness information.
On the page editing screen, simply add the ‘Formidable Forms’ block and select the fitness tracker you created from the dropdown list.
Formidable Forms will now show a preview of your form in the page editor. You can proceed to save your modifications.
Now, log in with a test user account and enter some sample data.
Showcasing Fitness Tracker Data in WordPress
Formidable Forms simplifies the process of displaying the data collected from your forms on your WordPress site.
You can select which fields to display and visualize the data using graphs and charts.
Edit the post or page where you want to showcase the fitness data. If you are using MemberPress, make sure to restrict access to that page so only logged-in users can view their personal fitness information.
Next, insert a shortcode into your page using the following format:
[frm-graph fields="22" y_title="Weight" x_axis="21" x_title="Date" type="line" title="Weight Tracking" user_id="current" data_type="average"]
This shortcode includes the following parameters:
- Fields – The ID for the field you want to use to display the data (in this case, the weight field).
- y_title – Title for the Y Axis, which will be Weight.
- x_axis – ID of the field used for the x-axis, which in this case is the date field.
- x_title – Title for the x-axis, which will be Date.
- user_id – Set to ‘Current’ so that only logged-in users can access their own data.
You can find the field ID by editing your fitness tracker form. The ID for each field will be displayed in the form preview.
After adding the shortcode, remember to save your changes.
First, log in using the dummy user account you previously set up to add test entries, and navigate to the page you just created.
This is how it appeared on our test website:
Developing Additional Fitness Tracking Tools in WordPress
Formidable Forms is the leading tool builder for WordPress.
In addition to the weight-loss tracking form, you can create various other online fitness calculators and tools.
It includes ready-to-use templates for a BMI calculator that shows a range, a daily calorie intake calculator, an exercise log form, and more.
Alternative Option:Formidable Forms is an excellent choice for creating sophisticated fitness trackers for your clients or community members. However, if you only require a basic fitness calculator for occasional use, we suggest trying WPForms instead.
WPForms is the most intuitive form builder available. It offers pre-designed calculator templates for BMI, BMR, daily calorie intake, weight gain, hip-to-waist ratio, and more. If you’re looking to create a free online fitness calculator to attract leads, WPForms is an ideal choice.
We trust that this guide has helped you successfully integrate a fitness tracker into your WordPress site. Additionally, you might find our curated list of the top calculator plugins for WordPress useful, or check out our tutorial on creating graphs and charts in WordPress using Visualizer.
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