The app brings with it a range of new benefits for operator and end user alike – but before we dive into the details, a quick recap of the Web Player.

The Wexer Web Player was designed to give fitness operators an easy-to-implement digital platform that would allow them to put their fitness experiences at customers’ fingertips 24/7, while also owning the experience and being able to charge for it should they wish.

A white labelled web application, the bread and butter of the Web Player is the access it provides to Wexer’s constantly refreshed library of over 1,000 on-demand classes from global content partners – all searchable and presented in collections and influencer-led channels to ensure users can quickly find the content they want.

Alongside all of this sits Connect, a dedicated area of the Web Player that’s unique to each operator. Connect allows operators to upload and stream their own self-produced content – both live-streamed and on-demand, creating content libraries that feature their in-house rockstar instructors – to create personalised, bespoke experiences that perfectly connect with and engage their members. From live streams of over-subscribed classes to mindfulness workshops, cookery classes to nutrition seminars, it all has a home in Connect.

And the great benefit is that everything sits together under one white labelled umbrella – self-produced content and third-party library for strength in depth – on a platform that can be password-protected and paywalled, offered as a standalone portal or embedded into the operator’s app, driving ownership and monetisation options for the operator.

Meanwhile, for the end user, it’s all about convenience and flexibility: Web Player content is accessible any time, anywhere, on any connected device, meaning people can work out wherever they want, whenever suits them.

And now, with the launch of the new Web Player app – available on iOS and Android – the whole experience becomes more flexible still.

Optimised for mobile

As a partner product for the Wexer Web Player, the new app is available as part of a Web Player bundle, with each operator’s app adopting the same design theme as its Web Player for consistency of user experience.

All Web Player content and features – including live-streamed and on-demand Connect content, Class of the Day, Channels and Collections – are accessible via the app, delivering a slick user experience for those wanting to tap in to the content via their mobile phones.

The app also offers enhanced casting functionality, enabling users to cast cross-platform should the need arise: irrespective of whether they’re using an Android or Apple phone, app users can cast to either an AirPlay or a Chromecast-enabled device. Via the website, by contrast, someone on an iPhone can only cast to Apple TV, and an Android phone user only to a Chromecast-enabled device.

And so the benefit for end users is enhanced convenience and flexibility, ensuring people enjoy the best possible experience however they choose to access the content and classes on their club’s Web Player: via the website on their computer, laptop or tablet, or via the new app on their mobile phone.

Personalising the message

For the operator, meanwhile, the new app brings the added benefit of being able to send push notifications. End users are asked to opt in to these notifications, but once that’s done – once members have been sold on the benefits of receiving alerts about the classes they love and their live streams about to start – these notifications can be automated and even set up to target specific audiences.

Furthermore, these targeted audiences can be built around behavioural data collected by the app – sending a message to all users who’ve done a specific live class, for example, or to all users who haven’t used the app in the last seven days.

It all adds up to even greater end user convenience, an optimised experience across every touchpoint, and enhanced marketing opportunities for operators.

Get in touch now to find out more about the new app, and the option to bundle it in with the Wexer Web Player: info@wexer.com

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For anyone not yet familiar with it, Connect is the area of the Wexer platform where you – gym operator, accommodation provider, hotel operator, corporate employer – can upload your own self-produced content.

The way we describe it: it’s like having your own TV channel – a place to share anything from on-demand workouts led by your star trainers to meditation sessions, cookery workshops, events hosted at your facilities… the floor is yours! You know your customers best, and Connect is where you get to meet their very specific needs, all fronted by the faces they know and love, all delivered under your brand.

The power of Connect

To date, Connect has only been available on the Wexer Web Player – our white labelled ‘any time, anywhere, any connected device’ portal. It sits at the top of the Web Player home page – the first thing users see, above the many channels and class collections populated by Wexer’s global content providers and influencers.

And when it’s used well, Connect works very, very well, with Asian fitness giant Evolution Wellness a prime example. In Evolution Wellness’s Virtual Studio – the Group’s digital fitness platform, powered by Wexer Web Player – only 30% of the content available is self-produced. However, that 30% accounts for 47% of all views. This self-produced content also commands an average 18-minute stream length, versus 11 minutes for third-party content.

This is the unquestionable power of local stars: the appeal of working out with people you know from your own club, even on the days when you can’t make it in and need to work out online.

Connecting in-club

As the Evolution Wellness example proves, self-produced online content provision – everyone’s go-to during lockdown – remains a vital part of the hybrid model moving forward.

But as members return to their clubs, now entirely used to working out with an on-screen instructor, in-club virtual is also seeing a boom – and that makes it the perfect time to turbocharge Wexer Virtual.

Specifically, we wanted to allow our customers to bring their own, in-house superstars to the big screens of their virtual studios. Think top instructors available round the clock rather than at peak times only. Think popular classes filmed and replayed over multiple sessions to maximise the number of members who get to enjoy them – especially valuable right now, with class capacity restrictions still in place in many markets. Think jam-packed studio schedules featuring familiar faces all day, every day, without the price tag of pay-by-the-hour class instruction.

Sound good? Then without further ado, allow us to introduce Virtual Connect – the same TV channel approach as in the Wexer Web Player, now launched and available on Wexer Virtual too.

That’s right: Wexer Virtual isn’t just about third-party content any more. It’s about your own content too, meaning your local stars – the instructors who have the relationships with your members – can front your whole in- and out-of-club group exercise offering for a consistent member experience.

So, if your members miss any of their favourite classes, they can now catch up in the gym any time – or at home and on the go when partnered with our digital solutions.

This new feature is FREE to all Wexer Virtual customers, all you need to do is contact your Account Manager to get set started. Or get in touch here if you are interested in launching a virtual offering. As an added bonus, the classes are downloaded onto your Wexer Virtual players for 100% guaranteed availability, so you can rely on the classes to run smoothly.

We’ll also be building on the functionality of Virtual Connect over the coming months, introducing live streaming to complement the existing on-demand capability. Think waitlisted classes streaming live into overflow studios and spaces in the club, and even between clubs in the estate.

Get ready to supercharge your group fitness studio! To find out more about Virtual Connect, contact us at info@wexer.com

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Australian telecommunications giant Optus has announced a new partnership with leading digital fitness expert Wexer to deliver more than 700 new fitness workouts through OS Fitness.

Launched in July 2020 on the Optus Sport app, OS Fitness content is available to all eligible Optus customers who have access to the Optus Sport app included as part of their mobile or internet plan. Non-Optus customers can subscribe to Optus Sport for A$14.99 a month, which also includes unlimited access to English Premier League football.

The new partnership with Wexer brings further choice to the OS Fitness offering, bringing the total number of classes available to over 1,000 and ensuring Optus Sport customers have access to high quality, on-demand workout content to suit their fitness needs and goals – whatever their age or fitness level.

Optus Head of TV and Content Corin Dimopoulos said: “There’s never been more talent in digital fitness, and we’ve picked our content partners from the best of the best. We wanted to work with Wexer because of its expertise in fitness and technology, as well as its ability to deliver a large volume of workout content we knew our customers would love.”

Optus Sport is available not only via mobile and tablet, but also via compatible smart TVs, laptops, PCs and the latest Xbox One gaming consoles – a flexibility of access that Wexer is able extend to its fitness content thanks to the new Wexer API, which allows Wexer content to be integrated across the full breadth of the Optus digital ecosystem.

Sam Aldred, Head of APAC for Wexer, adds: “This new partnership recognises the value of world-class fitness content in retaining and acquiring customers not only within the fitness industry, but across all industries. Our vision is for fitness and wellness to be everywhere, positively impacting people’s lives and businesses around the world.”

Mr Dimopoulos concludes: “OS Fitness is a great way to keep yourself and your family fit, because there’s a workout for everyone – whether that’s an express session or a full-body burn. We’re looking forward to seeing what our partnership with Wexer brings as we deliver even more great workouts to Optus Sport customers.”

OS Fitness complements an already strong Optus Sport offering, which includes exclusive live rights and on-demand access to some of the world’s best football, including the English Premier League and the Women’s Super League.

Media Contacts:

Optus Sport Fitness

Dani Hanlon / Tara White

+61 2 8082 7850 / media@optus.com.au

Wexer

Hazel Frank
+44 7720 602868/ info@wexer.com

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As an exerciser, you want a steady stream of fresh new ‘go-to’ content from your favourite names and faces.

As an operator, you want your members to be engaged with the exercise experiences you’re providing for them, wherever they may be.

Channels – a new feature in the Wexer Web Player – puts a huge tick against all of these requirements. Allow us to explain…

What is Channels?

With the launch of Channels in January, anyone logging on to the Wexer Web Player – the white label ‘any time, anywhere, any internet-enabled device’ platform – will see a new section on the home page.

Connect remains at the top. Unique to each operator and accessible only by members of its clubs, Connect will continue to provide the operator with their own TV channel: a space to stream whatever live and on-demand content they choose, from workouts to nutritional seminars, mindfulness workshops to cookery classes.

Directly beneath this sits Class of the Day. And then, replacing Class Collections, you’ll find Channels.

Channels is where we’ll shine a spotlight on the platform’s top content creators, whether that’s our global content providers – the likes of CYBEROBICS, Zumba and BOXX – or individual influencers and rockstars with great content and legions of active fans. Each will have their own Channel where all their content can be found; they can also create sub-channels within this to make their class menus even easier to navigate.

Why does that matter?

First of all, it hands additional creative freedom to the creators, as well as an incentive to create great new content.

The Web Player’s back end has been redesigned with a new, dedicated partner portal that supports instant, easy uploads. This portal also hands the creator far greater control over how their content is presented on the Channel, by giving many more options to add detail around each upload.

That additional detail is great for the creator’s brand, of course, but it’s great for the end user too, fuelling an enhanced search engine that ensures it’s easy to find precisely the workout they’re looking for. And if that workout proves to be one they particularly enjoy, fantastic – just click through to view everything else in that creator’s Channel. It’s one easy step to discovering a rich vein of new favourite workouts!

Alternatively, from the home page, users simply scroll across the Channels until they find the content creator they’re looking for, then click to see the full library of workouts by that provider or individual. It ensures users can quickly and easily find the latest new uploads from their favourite providers.

But here’s the vital piece of information for all Channel owners: the Channels that are visible the moment you log on, without having to scroll to see them, will be those with the freshest, most recently uploaded content.

It gives content creators even more motivation to keep new content flowing into the Web Player – great news for variety-seeking exercisers.

It also means it isn’t just the big players who dominate. Even one-man-band content creators can be in pole position on the home page if they’ve just uploaded a new workout. Again, it promotes variety, keeping exercisers engaged by giving them new things to try all the time.

The operator in mind

Importantly, while we’ve put more power in creators’ hands, we haven’t forgotten about the needs of the operator.

Of course, by incentivising creators to upload more and more great content, members will find more on their club’s white labelled Wexer Web Player to keep them motivated and active – and that platform, and workout experience, is owned by the operator.

We can also fine-tune the content around individual operators’ needs. If there’s a Channel that doesn’t fit a club’s membership profile, for example, no problem – we can switch that Channel off just for that operator. We can even switch off specific classes, leaving the Channel as a whole visible to the members. Long and short of it, content can be switched off (and on again if needed) within Channels to suit an operator’s requirements.

Additionally, while Channels will initially be offered to the cherry-picked ‘best of the best’, moving forward there’s scope for great creators – including health clubs – to drive usage and thus qualify for their own Channel. In turn, that will mean content is seen by all users of the platform around the world, with a revenue share agreement that goes hand-in-hand with this.

To find out more, please email us at info@wexer.com

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Then allow us to introduce Web Player Connect: a powerful new tool that Wexer will be launching next month, and that has been specifically created to connect trainers and content partners with end users during this period of isolation – and beyond.

Web Player Connect is designed to neatly integrate into the Wexer Web Player – and will be available free of charge to all Web Player customers, including existing customers.

Web Player Connect was conceived with a very specific goal in mind: to allow for the easy, but also ownable, sharing of workout content. As an operator, it gives you full control to mobilise even the most isolated members of your team, empowering your superstar instructors and trainers – wherever they are, and using nothing more than their mobile phones – to create a steady stream of fresh, high quality workout content for your members. You can then easily select what content gets published, when – giving you, the operator, full control of your own generated content.

These brand ambassadors simply use their phones to film themselves doing workouts, edit if needed, upload the videos into Connect. All content generated by your team is pushed into your own Web Player, for your members’ exclusive use.

It ensures that – even with everyone currently stuck at home – people still get to train with their favourite instructors and personal trainers.

All workouts can be made available on-demand, allowing you to build up a library of virtual classes delivered by your brand ambassadors. And even better, because both the Web Player and Wexer Mobile are white label platforms, all of that content is housed within your own branded portal; the home fitness offering becomes an extension of the in-club experience.

In turn, this helps build brand loyalty: rather than half-associating the workouts with the social media platforms on which they are shared, your members will associate just one brand with the content that has helped them through these tough times. Yours.

In the long run, housing these home workouts on your own platform rather than on social media can open the door to other commercial opportunities too: you might, for example, consider placing your class library behind a paywall once the COVID-19 crisis is over, allowing you to monetise all that great content.

In the meantime, though – in these times of crisis, with your brand ambassadors stuck at home and your members seeking fitness content they can trust – Web Player Connect is an invaluable member support tool.

It connects your team with your members, allowing you to provide a home fitness offering your members will instantly feel comfortable with: classes led by familiar faces, streamed direct into their living rooms, home gyms, gardens, garages.

It removes the barriers of geography that have resulted from ‘stay at home’ orders the world over, allowing you to give your members the best possible support during these challenging times: great workout content, from their favourite trainers, on-demand, any time, anywhere (as long as it’s at home right now!)

And it’s all free of charge.

At Wexer, we firmly believe that social isolation needn’t be a barrier to producing great new fitness content. It needn’t be a barrier to supporting your members. Wherever your trainers may be during these times of crisis, Web Player Connect is there to unlock the power of your people. It is there to support you in supporting your members, ensuring it’s your brand that offers the fitness solution they are – now more than ever – looking for.

 For more information please contact us at info@wexer.com

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Smart+ Switch has been designed as a standalone product that allows operators to harness the power of virtual group cycling – even where a full studio isn’t an option.

The bike features all the market-leading technology you’d expect from BODY BIKE, but with an important added feature: an integrated screen through which users can access a specially curated, pre-loaded collection of Wexer’s best virtual cycling classes.

Whether on the gym floor of a mainstream club, in a corporate facility, hotel gym or hotel room, the new bike delivers the full buzz and engagement of group cycling to those working out independently. The user simply jumps on, selects a class and rides.

For those interested in performance data, Wexer’s tech integration with BODY BIKE means all user metrics – from power to cadence, calories to distance – can be shown on the screen.

This industrial-grade screen has been designed for durability and reliability, while the programming is supported by the same robust Wexer Virtual platform that boasts a 99.9 per cent uptime across all Wexer clients in over 50 countries.

Finally, there’s a unique optional 180° swivel on the screen, which allows for floor-based training in front of the bike where appropriate. Once again drawing from the extensive Wexer class library, these floor-based workouts – focused on strength and stretching – are specially curated to complement a cycling workout; the user is encouraged to select one of these classes on completion of their ride.

In this way, the BODY BIKE Switch allows for a fully independent – yet expert-led and highly motivational – full-body workout, wherever the user may be.

“We’re bringing together the best products on the market – the best bike, the best virtual system and the best cycling classes – to deliver an indoor cycling experience like no other,” says Kim Hessellund, CEO of BODY BIKE parent company the HDD Group. “Whatever the constraints of your club or fitness facility, you can now offer world-class indoor cycling to your customers.”

For more information please contact us at info@wexer.com

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Wexer Trainer is a brand new digital fitness solution that will ensure your club group stays relevant to your digitally evolving members. How?

• Customisable Technology

The Wexer Trainer in interactive touch screen system, pre-loaded with hundreds of virtual classes and exercises that can be combined to generate workouts. You can personalise your library to effectively engage, and retain members.

• World-Class Content

The Wexer Trainer contains more than 900 individual exercises and hundreds of virtual classes from leading content partners worldwide.

• Intuitive Fitness Experiences

Our technology has been designed for gym floor areas to better serve members that are not current group exercise users, and provide educational resources for equipment on the gym floor.

Watch your inbox for more information about the Wexer Trainer or feel free to get in touch at info@www.wexer.com

The post Wexer Trainer – Our newest and most advanced product is now available appeared first on Wexer.

These are the sorts of instructors people join and leave clubs for. The instructors who ideally, you’d get in front of every single member. But can they instruct every class in every club across your portfolio? Sadly not.

And this means that, while you deliver some truly great classes, in all likelihood others will slip below your ideal standards.

So what can you do about this?

1. Clone your instructors – not scientifically possible right now (not to mention ethically questionable!)
2. Employ more superstars – a great idea in principle, but even if you have the budget, these people are hard to find.
3. Use technology to maximise the impact of your superstars.

What do we mean by point #3?

We’re talking about live streaming: technology that enables a club operator to simultaneously record and broadcast live classes, meaning that members across all clubs can be doing the same class with the same superstar instructor at the same time.

What better way to maximise the reach of your best instructors?

A number of leading health club operators are already starting to integrate this technology into their clubs. And you can too. This technology is now available – in the shape of Wexer Broadcast – as an add-on to all Wexer customers who commit to installing the system in a minimum of 10 studios.

If you’d like to have a chat about how this could work in your clubs, direct message me or email:

Daniel Waide, Daniel.waide@www.wexer.com for Americas & Australasia
Robert Louw, Robert.Louw@www.wexer.com or Adie Meyer, Adie.Meyer@www.wexer.com for Europe & Asia

The post Wexer launches live streaming for the health and fitness industry worldwide appeared first on Wexer.

Wexer Count provides data that will enable Fitness Directors and Group Exercise Managers to better understand their group exercise offering and maximise studio usage during off-peak times. By counting and reporting the number of people entering a studio, fitness operators can quantify member behaviours and patterns relating to group exercise classes; both live and virtual.

“Wexer is excited to be the first to launch an embedded people counting system into a virtual fitness player,” says Paul Bowman, CEO for Wexer. Wexer Count is an ideal product for both small and large group exercise studios, providing an accurate solution to leverage data for member engagement and satisfaction.”

“Wexer Count was launched so that our partners can accurately measure how many members participate in group exercise classes, while Wexer focuses on delivering the most advanced fitness technology,” says Bowman. “Wexer Count does this by providing real-time business intelligence.”

The embedded people counting system is a robust sensor that wirelessly connects to a receiver where data is transmitted to Wexer Admin; an online portal where fitness operators can view attendance across each group exercise class.

Wexer Count is available to purchase now. For more information contact:

• For Americas and Australia: Daniel Waide, Daniel.Waide@www.wexer.com
• For Europe and Asia: Robert Louw, Robert.Louw@www.wexer.com or Adie Meyer, Adie.Meyer@www.wexer.com

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