One London Techie Goes Swimmingly

A London start-up company has conquered the world with its swimming app, SwimIO. The app has recorded almost 3m swims covering a distance of 4 billion meters, that’s around the world 100 times.

Now live in 155 countries, SwimIO is the first swimming app to go global. The app encourages more participation by providing a local search and live timetables so users can find where their nearest favourite swimming activity is taking place. The top five countries, by page views, is UK, USA, China, Spain and Poland.

Users access search and live timetables over 3m times every month which equates to 4m swimmers, 9m sessions and 27m total page views (68% from mobiles). So, finding out where the nearest lane swimming is available or where a mums and toddler’s session is taking place, is now at the touch of a button.

Live timetables are currently being used by over 500 swimming pool sites in the UK and Ireland and through some new technology and APIs these timetables can be viewed on the pool website, on the app, on screens in reception and via voice phone service. At home, users can even create their own weekly timetable and print it. Expansion of the API service is being rolled out to all English speaking countries and the number of page views are expected to double in 2017.

SwimIO is provided by Active in Time (AiT) originally based at Google Campus, near London’s silicon roundabout and the founder, Dan Morgan created it out of frustration of not being able to find pool space for his water polo club. Dan took on the task of bringing swimming pool marketing from the 1990’s to the present day, linking new technology and water together for the first time. Dan says, ‘it’s cool that around one third of public pools in the UK have been early adopters of the technology which provides a seamless digital gateway of choice to the consumer.’

AiT plans to integrate its live timetable APIs to new services to be launched in the UK soon including, Reserve with Google, Facebook Calendar, Amazon Alexa and Yell who are all looking to add local search, linked to live timetable APIs, plus transaction. These granular, on-demand searches, essential for today’s consumer, are due to explode in 2017 and AiT are ready to integrate all local pool providers with these new services.

http://www.helloswimio.com/

Editors Notes

‘Swimmer Dan Morgan’ the founder, created the app in his bedroom in 2011 and now swimmers have recorded over 3m swims, clocking up over 4 billion meters, that’s the equivalent of 100 times around the world. In June 2015 Dan put the first swimming app on the Apple Watch and before that the Pebble Watch. Dan’s aim has always been to put swimmers on equal terms with runners and cyclists in the world of wearables and software and SwimIO is the first app to integrate with popular running and cycling apps along with Apple’s HealthKit so workouts can be logged.

Active in Time (AiT) is the sister company of LeisureDB

Contact

Founder, Dan Morgan dan@activeintime.com 07894 998333

Operator Software, Jamie Buck jamie@activeintime.com 07887 768312

Social Media Tips from Industry Leader

In this month's Health Club Management (Issue 3, 2017, pg.61-62), the social media manager at Xercise4Less discussed what lead them to win our Social Media Fitness Index Q2, Q3 & Q4 2016 reports. 

 
Xercise4Less consistently posts about the success of its members on its various social media channels...

Xercise4Less consistently posts about the success of its members on its various social media channels...

 

Joe Hall writes...

"We live in an era where people can turn themselves into a squeaky talking fox on Snapchat, or hit an ‘angry’ button at a piece of news content on Facebook. In fact, the nature of what you can do has become so varied that the whole concept of ‘social media’ – what exactly this now is – becomes quite hard to define.

I’d consider social media to be a mass get-together which no longer takes place in the park or in the pub, but in a Millennial third space: online. There might not be a see-saw or a pint of Tetley’s Smooth Flow in sight, but humans interact in this digital social media space in much the same way as they do offline in the local park or pub. That’s a result of psychological traits and human instinct.

But social media goes one step further: it amplifies human behaviour. It cuts out the routine, unexciting, dreary, monotonous matters that happen in the real world and just gives us the more dramatic, action-packed, high-end pleasure or high-end pain experiences.

As marketing decision-makers, we need to respect that the end consumer on social media is out for the thrills and spills. They’re certainly not scrolling through Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat to bask in any dullness or absorb meaningless promotional waffle.

At Xercise4Less, it’s my duty to ensure our social media appeals to our audience’s wants and needs. I’ve outlined four ways in which we do this.

  1. Deliver emotional conten
  2. Contests and gift
  3. A sense of belongin
  4. Post for your audience

Even when Xercise4Less was nominated for the Best Use of Social Media by the Leisure Database Company, we ensured the announcement was very much all about our members.

What lies ahead for the world of social media?
...Human behaviour and psychological traits should always be at the heart of any social media and marketing strategy". 

Original source: Health Club Management