People have become more conscious about their health over the years. The fact that mental health is health is now catching on. This is great because stress affects your physical health in the long run, if it isn’t controlled. It more importantly affects your weight. This is one of the main reasons why people are now inclined to track their fitness activities and diet.
There is no magic bullet that works for all. It started with basic monitoring of fitness activities and food. This is practically available in the digital offerings of many popular gyms, and fitness programs/apps like “Weight Watchers”, “Strava”, and “Runkeeper”. The idea being getting the customer used to the idea of monitoring various aspects such as their activities, food and weight. While this works for some people, it doesn’t work for others.
In the last few months, I looked up a few more fitness programs and hit upon “Noom”. Upon looking it up, I see that as of Jul 2022, it has about 10M+ downloads on Google Playstore, about 294K reviews and is also rated 4.3. Even in the Apple PlayStore, it has about 707K reviews and rated at 4.7. When I looked up the price of a Noom program, it costs you 200 USD annually. It isn’t free but why are so many people willing to pay so much? So, I dug deeper into what makes Noom really popular.
Learning
There are several lessons to be learnt with Noom!In terms of product, they are certainly a premium offering in comparison to the gym memberships, or other digital health offerings like Weight Watchers.
Learning # 1 – User pain points that Noom identified
- World-wide, people use some not-so-effective techniques like new-year resolutions, crazy diets or non-sustainable workouts that they don’t enjoy, to lose weight. These plans promise “instant-weight” loss. Instant weight loss may happen but it could not be sustainable. That is when they give up and fall back to old habits.
- People don’t understand the foods they eat. Due to all these factors, they don’t lose weight. This also stresses them out and it is then a vicious cycle of people not losing weight and getting stressed out. Stress is one of the factors due to which people don’t lose weight.
- The gap that they were trying to fill –
- Weight loss has its ups and downs. Instant weight loss with a diet (that you may not like) is not sustainable.
- Many diets stop you from eating from your favorite foods and make you crave them. Help people understand more about the food they are eating.
- Special occasions like festivals (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.), weddings, special ceremonies for loved ones are instances where you eat rich foods. How can you manage your health on these days while also participating in these occasions?
Learning # 2 – Understanding user habits
- Stress is counter-productive for your weight loss journey. So, it is great that Noom has applied the concepts of “Cognitive Behavior Therapy” to come up with counseling and motivation tips for the user. It is important to reinforce the fact that weight loss is a journey if you want it to be sustainable.
- Classifying foods as green, yellow and red so that you can eat it in moderation is important. This will help the users understand the food they are eating and adjust accordingly.
- Noom wants to fix user’s habits so that they eat right. When they eat right and exercise, users would benefit for life. Everything in moderation leads to sustainable results. That is where users are seeing the benefits.
Learning #3 – Digital health means robust app experience
People rely on the app for their daily motivation and tracking foods. The app has to handle more traffic and can’t have critical bugs. Be prepared for hard reviews if the app malfunctions with your release.
- User data entry – Entering the food you eat should be easy in the app. Many people complained about it being a tedious process. For the 3 meals a day that you enter, it should be very easy to enter.
- Personalized recommendations – Noom comes up with recommendations based on your food intake. If that calorie tracking is incorrect then the user is incorrectly advised on what they can intake for the day. Similarly in terms of activity, if they track steps incorrectly, then it has an incorrect idea on your fitness activities.
- Performance of the app – When your product is 100% digital, the performance of the app is non-negotiable because otherwise there is no way for the user to get coaching. Remember that your user is paying 200 USD at least annually whereas competitors like weight watchers are just charging 60 USD annually for their digital weight loss program. So, the app has to be available 24 X 7.
- Tone of the coaching – Some demographics thought that it was too humorous while hiding the real content. Others thought that it was a tone for middle aged people.
- Integration with other channels – Many people don’t want to download “yet-another-app”. They would like to see information integrated with apps or devices they already own such as GoogleFit, Samsung, Apple phones. This will be very important as Noom grows.
Learning # 4 – Excellent customer support
Weight loss and stress are very important challenges that people care about and so when you need support – digital or health-coaching, you need to have an actual person responding to their comments. It is great to see that Noom has made that investment. They try to
address every single comment. (Check out their Google reviews and Apple store reviews).
When there is a critical issue, the customer support team is slammed with thousands of users complaining and so the fix has to be applied as soon as possible. Remember that people are paying for the whole package – Motivational coaching + tracking and personalized advice on food intake and fitness activities + Customer support. If people find issues with any of these then they are likely to pull back their subscription. So, customer support is the 1st line of defence here. Immediate answers means less stress for your customer.
It seems to have got the program concept correct. In terms of understanding the user’s pain points and fixing the user’s habits to get healthier. Fixing habits of millions of people to be able to live a healthier life is a tough problem and they have got a head start. Weight loss and stress when managed properly can help patients with chronic illness like diabetes.
Personally for me, if I were to pay a premium for an app then the experience has to be robust. A flaky experience is a dissatisfaction for me. Integration is key too. I already track my activities with another fitness app such as runkeeper. So, I shouldn’t have to enter it twice.
Noom should explore more ways to train user habits so that they lead a fuller and healthier life!