Lakeside Fitness 247

The Problem

A premium gym hiding behind a budget digital experience.

Lakeside Fitness 247 positions itself as a premium transformation experience — "Not Just a Gym. A Transformation Experience." — yet the digital experience significantly undersells that promise.

The existing website is built on Wix with a generic template aesthetic that reads closer to a budget gym than an elite training facility. More critically, members are handed a generic third-party Gymmaster app — unbranded, feature-heavy and used almost exclusively for Bluetooth door access. The brand promise of transformation evaporates the moment a member opens the app.

A competitive analysis of the Wilmington, NC market revealed that Lakeside is the only gym attempting premium positioning in the region — Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Fit4Life and Unleashed Fitness all occupy budget or no-frills territory. That whitespace opportunity is being undermined by a digital experience that doesn't communicate premium.

Before — lakesidefitness.com

Before — Gymmaster App

• Website built on Wix — generic template aesthetic, no brand personality
• Third-party Gymmaster app — no Lakeside branding, generic UI, feature overload
• App used almost exclusively for door access — zero member engagement beyond entry
• No unified design language across web and mobile touchpoints
• Wilmington flagship positioning not reflected anywhere in the digital experience
• Three separate Instagram accounts with no unified brand strategy
• Photography focused on empty equipment shots — no human energy or transformation narrative

Research

Information Architecture

The IA covered two separate products — the website and the app — each with distinct user needs, interaction patterns and navigation logic. Both were mapped before any wireframes were drawn.

Website — Primary Navigation

• Home
• Locations
• Membership
• The Experience
• The App

App — Bottom Navigation (5 tabs)

• Progress
• Classes
• Home
• Access
• Account

• Home tab as the daily dashboard

  The app Home tab surfaces today's class schedule, streak, and location context — the most relevant information for a returning member opening the app.

• Access requires a deliberate tap

  Door access is on its own dedicated tab, requiring a deliberate action rather than a persistent background process — preventing accidental unlocks.

• Location-aware context switching

  Home and Access screens automatically surface the nearest location — removing the need to manually select a gym every visit.

• Website membership — monthly only

  Monthly-only pricing displayed on the website honors the gym's no-contracts brand positioning and simplifies the decision for prospective members.

• The Experience as a dedicated page

  Amenities, equipment, coaching and the "Pray. Lift. Repeat." ethos all live on a dedicated Experience page — separate from membership — to serve prospective members at different stages of consideration.

Wireframes

Low fidelity wireframes for every major screen across both the website and the app before touching color, typography or photography. The website homepage spans ten sections; the app covers onboarding through all five core tab screens.

• 01

  Ten Website Sections

  Hero, Credibility Strip, Brand Promise, Locations, Membership Tiers, The Experience, Client Testimonials, Free Tour Callout, App Download, and Footer — each mapped before any visual design began.

• 02

  App Onboarding Flow

  A five-screen onboarding flow covering welcome, goal selection, membership tier, location selection and notification preferences — front-loading the decisions that personalize the experience.

• 03

  Check In as a Hero Moment

  The Access tab centers a large Check In button with a subtle pulse animation — making the most-used app action unmissable and turning a functional moment into a brand moment.

• 04

  Progress Tab for Retention

  A dedicated Progress tab surfaces workout streaks, visit history and milestones — creating an engagement loop that keeps members returning and gives the app value beyond door access.

Design System

High Fidelity

01 / 06 — Website Homepage

Premium Positioning from the First Scroll

The homepage opens with a full-bleed editorial hero — dark forest background, brass accent type, athletic photography. Ten sections tell the complete Lakeside brand story from the hero through the app download CTA, with alternating light and dark section rhythm throughout.

02 / 06 — Locations Page

Three Locations, One Unified Experience

The Locations page surfaces all three gyms — Clarksville VA, Danville VA, and Wilmington NC — with hours, amenities and a Get Directions CTA for each. An embedded map anchors the page spatially. Consistent card structure across all three locations reinforces brand unity.

03 / 06 — Membership Page

Simple Tiers, No Contracts

Monthly-only pricing presented in a clean three-column comparison — Standard, Premium and VIP. The no-contracts positioning is a feature not a footnote. A day pass tier is surfaced below for visitors and trial members. Each tier links directly to a sign-up flow.

04 / 06 — App Onboarding

A Brand Moment from the First Screen

Five onboarding screens establish the Lakeside brand before the member ever opens the door — welcome screen, goal selection, membership tier, location selection and notification preferences. Each screen is a deliberate brand moment in forest and brass.

05 / 06 — App Core Screens

Five Tabs. Every Member Need Covered.

Progress surfaces streaks and visit history. Classes shows today's schedule with one-tap booking. Home is the daily dashboard with location-aware context. Access centers the Check In button with a pulse animation. Account manages membership, settings and personal details.

06 / 06 — The Experience Page

Sell the Transformation, Not the Equipment

The Experience page leads with the "Pray. Lift. Repeat." ethos before listing a single piece of equipment. Amenities, coaching profiles, recovery facilities and class types are all presented in a dark editorial layout that matches the intensity of the brand.

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Results

Reflection

• Being a real user changes everything

  Designing for a gym I'm actually a member of gave the research phase a depth that competitive analysis alone couldn't provide. Firsthand observation of the Gymmaster app in daily use — understanding exactly how and why members interact with it — directly shaped the app architecture in a way that persona creation from research alone wouldn't have.

• Design systems compound across projects

  Having built a full token-based design system for the Fishin' Pig project first made the Lakeside system significantly faster to build. The two-layer architecture — primitives then semantics — was already a proven pattern. The time investment from the first project paid dividends on the second.

• Web and app are two different design problems

  Designing both simultaneously required constantly switching mental models — editorial column layouts for web, native iOS patterns for app. The decision to give the app 8px card radius while keeping web at 0px wasn't arbitrary — it reflects the different aesthetic expectations of each platform and the different relationship users have with each.

• What I would do differently

  User testing on the app onboarding flow — specifically the day pass tier pricing and the goal selection screen — would validate or challenge decisions made from competitive research and design intuition. Earlier photography art direction would also have improved the high fidelity phase, replacing the section-by-section hunt for placeholder imagery with a coherent visual direction from the start.

Final Thought