Health and Wellness Apps: The Biggest Obstacle to Their Success

You wake up.
Running shoes, Strava.

Battersea Park? Smashed.
Overnight oats, MyFitnessPal.

The workday, Motion.
De-stress, Headspace.

Trouble sleeping? You get the point.

This is what an Oxford academic journal called the “wellness revolution”—and like all cultural shifts, it’s made a BIG splash in the App Store.

The global wellness apps market was valued at USD 11.27 billion in 2024, and it’s projected to nearly double, reaching USD 26 billion by 2030. There are now roughly 350,000 wellness apps across the App Store and Google Play, with tens of thousands more entering the fray each year.

Yet there is one undeniable, unshakeable obstacle that will always stand in the way of their success...

Health and Wellness Apps Will Eternally Face the Same Challenge

How many times have you told friends you were going to take up boxing, re-join the gym, paint, write, bake, stretch (or anything similar) and not followed through?

Acquisition is easier in this industry because it’s always been easy to promise ourselves, we’ll improve tomorrow.

A download is just the modern version of that fickle announcement.

But sticking with it? That’s where people struggle. And for apps, that’s a problem. Because in this industry, retention (subscriptions, renewals, engagement) is where the money is made.

This is what behavioural science calls the intention–action gap.

Closing the Intention–Action Gap in Wellness Apps

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

Pretty obvious quote—but here’s the snag. Too many developers assume that a simple in-app tracker is the “system.” And it really, really isn’t.

You’re not just building an app You’re building their new system.

And in the early, conscious stage of habit formation, the key is keeping the behaviour front of mind. This is known as environment design: if you want to play guitar more often, keep it in the middle of your living room. If you want to read more, leave the book by your bed. If you want to… etc. etc. The visual cue makes the behaviour harder to ignore.

That’s the role your app must play—the “guitar in the room”—always present, always visible, nudging intention into awareness until it becomes automatic.

Behavioural science suggests it takes around 21–66 days to establish a new habit. Which is why early-life retention is everything. The first few weeks aren’t just about onboarding; they’re about engineering visibility in a way that feels supportive, not intrusive. Find the perfect way to stay front of mind in those crucial days, and you give users the best chance to make the habit stick.

Because the moment someone downloads your app, they’re trusting that your design, your reminders, and your feedback loops will carry them when motivation fades. They’re outsourcing part of their willpower to you.

Retention lives in those repeated daily choices — small actions that compound and emotionally reinforce a new identity.

If “every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become,” then every small engagement inside your app is a vote for whether your product is working. App opens, session length, feature usage, streak completions, notification clicks—they’re more than numbers.

The Psychology + Technology Equation

When it comes to turning intention into action, wellness apps have a finite set of CRM levers to pull. The obvious one is push notifications—but in 2025, that’s skimming the surface. The real toolkit is wider: in-app messaging, email, SMS, WhatsApp, inbox feeds, reward mechanics, and even contextual nudges (like lock-screen widgets or wearables integration).

What matters isn’t just what lever you pull, but why and when. That’s where psychology enters. The right lever, at the wrong time, is spam. The right lever, at the right time, is a nudge that carries someone over the intention–action gap—perfecto.

The Power of When in App Content Strategy

Timing is just as important as the channel or the message. Many wellness behaviours naturally slot into specific parts of the day: sleep apps before bed, nutrition apps around meals, fitness apps in the early morning or after work. But assuming every user follows the same rhythm is risky.

The best apps balance habit archetypes (e.g., “bedtime = meditation”) with personalised signals (past usage, biometric data, contextual triggers). In other words: start with the natural slot, then refine based on the user’s lived behaviour.

Prompts: Driving Action with Timely Cues

The prompt is the cue that nudges users to act on their intention. In health and wellness apps, this means surfacing the right message at the right moment—when motivation is highest.

Example – Strava:
When Strava notifies you that “Your friends are out running”, it’s more than a push notification. It’s a psychological nudge powered by two forces:

• The psychology: It taps into social proof and social identity. Seeing peers train reinforces accountability (“I should be out too”) and belonging (“this is what my group does”). Both are powerful drivers of behaviour.

• The technology: Strava’s CRM stack processes live activity uploads from your network and delivers the notification in real time. The data infrastructure ensures the cue lands at the exact moment you’re most likely to act.

What looks like a simple push is actually the fusion of behavioural science and MarTech. It isn’t really about your friends — it’s about you, your identity, and your latent intention to exercise.

Payoff: Reinforcing Habits with Rewards

The payoff is the emotional or tangible reward that follows the action. For health and wellness apps, this is how abstract goals (“reduce stress,” “get fitter”) are translated into immediate reinforcement that keeps users coming back.

Example – Headspace:
After a meditation session, Headspace plays a short, playful animation and offers a “well done” affirmation.

• The psychology: This leans on instant gratification. While long-term benefits like lower anxiety are hard to measure, a smiley animation and positive affirmation deliver a dopamine hit that proves the action mattered.

• The technology: The design system generates rewards at session completion, adapting visuals and tone over time. The CRM layer scales it further with personalised streak emails or reminders of past progress.

Every small payoff compounds into a stronger habit loop. By making each session feel like a mini victory, apps rewire how users relate to the behaviour itself.

Growth Lives Where Retention Does

Health and wellness apps don’t fail because people won’t download them—acquisition has never been the major problem within this industry…

They fail because people don’t stick around.

The intention–action gap is the obstacle. Users arrive full of hope, outsourcing their willpower to your design. What keeps them is the system you build around them: prompts that surface at the right time, and payoffs that make progress feel rewarding.

That’s why retention is the real growth engine. Downloads are cheap hope; sustainable growth is built on daily engagement, renewals, and identity-shaping habits.

In a marketplace of 350,000+ apps, the winners won’t be the ones shouting louder. They’ll be the ones who combine psychology with technology to make behaviour change feel natural. Apps that users trust to bridge the gap between who they are and who they want to become.

Those apps don’t just grow. They compound.

At ConsultMyApp, we help health and wellness brands close that intention–action gap, with strategies that turn downloads into lasting engagement. If you’d like to see how we can help your app grow, get in touch.