OneFit — a UX case study (part one)
The company
“Follow the newest workouts or train on your own, anywhere and anytime. Unlimited.”
OneFit is a Dutch company that offers a flexible, all-inclusive sports membership for a fixed price per month. This membership gives its customers access to more than 500 gyms, studios and swimming pools in the four largest cities in the Netherlands. For the health clubs, OneFit pays a purchase price per visit from its members, which is individually agreed with each health club.
The whole OneFit system is based on their mobile app, in which users can sign up, book and cancel classes, pause and quit their membership. But it wasn’t always like this. Initially, the company worked with a contactless smart card system. It was only in 2014 that OneFit decided to switch their business model from cash-machine to a subscription-based model. As the test in Amsterdam proved to be a success, OneFit soon rolled out to Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. The company has been doing so well in the Dutch market that it recently expanded to Germany and Spain.
Analysis and results
This analysis is part of a UX/UI assignment for Codaisseur, the Dutch Academy where I’m currently following a Digital Design boot camp. Its findings will lay the groundwork for the second part of this assignment, which will include a design for the most relevant pain points that OneFit is facing.
The following results emerged from this UX Case Study. The problem statement is centered around specific pain points the company is facing.
Below you can find detailed information on how the analysis was conducted and what it was based on.
Market and competitors
According to the Dutch Central Agency for Statistics (CBS), almost 70% of the Dutch population practice sports. The three preferred sports in the country are fitness (35% of the population), running and swimming. Yoga, on the other hand, is the fastest growing sport.
As the infographic above shows, the current trends create the perfect environment for innovation in health and fitness in the Netherlands. Especially among the Millennials, a health cult can be clearly observed. This target group is often highly educated and either lives or works in large cities.
The fitness market in the Netherlands is fragmented and consists mainly of many small businesses and big health club chains. The latter has a large market share, especially the budget chains, such as Fit for Free and Basic Fit. The small businesses, on the other hand, usually struggle to sustain a good cash flow. This is where room for growth can be found in the fitness market.
OneFit anticipated these market developments when creating their innovative concept. The company has a monopoly position in the Netherlands regarding the product form competition. In the product category though, OneFit faces big competitors, who lead the Dutch fitness market. The way the company found to set its service apart from those market leaders was to offer a simple and flexible membership system, as well as a big variety of classes and locations.
To be able to protect and expand their current market share though, OneFit must focus on tackling multiple risk factors, such as the possible arrival of competitors from abroad and the existing technical problems within their app. Based on customer reviews, as well as on the opinion of the survey and interview respondents, the following matrix was created to show the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
User experience
There is no service without customers. That is why I started this analysis by studying who the OneFit customers and its target group are. Based on research (CBS, NOC-NSF, customer reviews), I came up with three personas: two OneFit customers and one potential customer.
After that, I tried to identify which problems these personas may come across by creating job stories. Then I sent out a survey to OneFit customers and conducted semi-structured interviews with potential customers. The semi-structured interviews were fruitful for confirming certain assumptions, but also for bringing up interesting and even surprising results, as shown below.
The second finding could lead to the conclusion that the brand awareness must be improved. Unfortunately, the number of people interviewed was not significant enough to confirm this hypothesis, since only one respondent had a health club membership. This respondent was an exchange student who joined his university gym and had just arrived in the country.
However, aligning the interview and survey results with the customer reviews allowed me to identify the greatest pain points OneFit is currently facing, as detailed in the graphics below.
These results made it possible to have a better understanding of the OneFit customers and its target group. Admittedly, they confirmed my initial assumptions. Nevertheless, they were crucial to define the most urgent pain points and to form a problem statement, as shown at the beginning of this article.
This analysis provided the necessary tools to work on improving the OneFit users’ experience. Stay tuned to see the Design Case (the second part of this assignment) I’ll be posting next week. Thank you for reading!
