What it does
Deliciously Ella is a holistic wellness app designed to help users feel better through plant-based eating, exercise, mindfulness, and sleep. It serves as a comprehensive toolkit, offering thousands of recipes, guided workout classes (like yoga and pilates), meditation sessions, and structured meal plans. The app also includes a tracker to help users monitor their daily habits and progress toward their wellness goals.
Where it shines
The app excels at providing immediate, tangible value. During onboarding, after a user selects a goal like "Eat better" (00:08), the app instantly serves up a "quick win" screen with relevant recipes (00:10). This creates a powerful first impression. The app’s content is beautifully organized, allowing users to not only 'favorite' items but also create custom Collections (01:25). This deep personalization encourages long-term investment. The 'My Tracker' feature (13:20) is also a highlight, presenting a clean, all-in-one dashboard for monitoring food, exercise, mindfulness, and more.
UX highlights
- Clear Information Architecture: The app is divided into intuitive top-level categories (Recipes, Exercise, Mindfulness, Sleep), making navigation straightforward.
- Interactive Checklists: Recipe ingredient lists are interactive (03:03), allowing users to check off items as they go. This simple interaction adds a lot of utility when cooking.
- Actionable Content: Most content pieces, from recipes to meditations, are designed to be used. For example, users can add all recipe ingredients to a shopping list with a single tap (03:15).
- Consistent Visuals: The app maintains a consistent, calming aesthetic with high-quality photography and a cohesive color palette, reinforcing the brand's wellness focus.
- Granular Filtering: The app provides deep filtering options for recipes and classes (06:01), letting users narrow down content by meal type, duration, allergy, instructor, and more.
- Clever Growth Loops: The ability to "Gift This Recipe" (10:11) allows subscribers to share premium content, acting as a powerful, trust-based referral mechanism.
Monetization & growth
Monetization is introduced early but thoughtfully. After the 'quick win' screen, the user is prompted to sign up to start a 7-day free trial (00:18). The paywall (00:52) presents a clear choice between a monthly and an annual plan, using a comparison table to highlight the benefits of the premium tier and a "SAVE 60%" tag to incentivize the annual purchase. The app confirms the successful subscription with a welcoming success modal (01:03).
Who it’s for
The app is ideal for individuals interested in or already committed to a plant-based, holistic lifestyle. It caters to users who want structured guidance, whether through daily tracking, pre-made meal plans, or curated workout collections. The content is accessible enough for beginners but also offers enough variety for those more experienced in wellness practices.
Notes & opportunities
While the onboarding is strong, the app requests notification permissions immediately after the user lands on the homepage for the first time (01:08). While there is a warm-up screen, this could feel slightly abrupt. Delaying this prompt until the user has engaged more with the content, for example, after saving their first recipe or starting a plan, might increase opt-in rates by providing more context for why notifications are valuable.