Health & Wellness
Conversion, AOV, free shipping behavior, and shipping revenue for H&W brands on Shopify, indexed against a consistent baseline, updated monthly.
Part of the PDQ Checkout Benchmarks: 130M+ checkout sessions across 500+ Shopify merchants, indexed to June 2024 = 1.0x.
Health & Wellness Checkout Performance Index: August 2026
An index of 1.15x means that metric is 15% above baseline. 0.92x means it's 8% below. We publish relative change rather than absolute numbers because absolute rates vary too much by merchant size and category to be meaningful as cross-merchant benchmarks.
August 2026: Health & Wellness Checkout Insights
Three signals worth acting on this month
Written for Health & Wellness operators. Every observation connects to a decision you can make this week.
Health & Wellness CVR recovered to 1.05x in July, reversing June's dip and extending the above-baseline streak to twenty-six months
June's CVR reading of 1.03x was the lowest the Health & Wellness vertical had posted since March 2025, raising the question of whether the vertical's long-running above-baseline conversion streak was softening structurally. July's 1.05x recovery answers that question: the June dip was a one-month event, most likely driven by post-Memorial Day traffic mix and the free shipping threshold disruption that followed the May promotional surge. The streak continues.
Twenty-six consecutive months of above-baseline conversion is a dataset record that no other vertical comes close to matching. The structural explanation remains unchanged: Health & Wellness buyers resolve their purchase decision before reaching checkout, through ingredient research, brand evaluation, and subscription comparison that happens in the funnel stages preceding the cart. Checkout is confirmation, not persuasion. The vertical's conversion resilience -- recovering from a 1.03x dip back to 1.05x in a single month -- reflects that underlying buyer commitment rather than any specific checkout configuration.
What to do: If your Health & Wellness conversion dipped in June and recovered in July without any checkout changes on your end, the June dip was traffic-mix driven and the recovery confirms your checkout is sound. If your conversion hasn't recovered and is still running below 1.05x, the gap is almost certainly at the shipping reveal step. Pull your July funnel drop-off rates and compare the shipping reveal abandonment against May's pre-promotional-surge reading. That comparison will isolate whether the threshold change from May to June left a residual friction effect that July's traffic mix is still encountering.
The free shipping rate fell further to 0.78x in July, its lowest reading since before the May surge. The promotional expansion has fully unwound.
Health & Wellness free shipping rate spiked to 0.99x in May on Memorial Day campaigns, pulled back to 0.85x in June, and fell again to 0.78x in July. The July reading is now below April's 0.76x -- the pre-Memorial Day level -- by only 2 points, meaning the vertical has essentially fully unwound the promotional free shipping expansion from May. Whatever brands did in May to push free shipping eligibility to 0.99x has been reversed.
The full unwind is actually healthy news for shipping economics. Shipping revenue ticked up to 0.81x in July from 0.74x in June, consistent with the free shipping rate pulling back and more orders paying for delivery. The vertical is returning to its structural equilibrium: below-baseline free shipping rate, below-baseline shipping revenue (because the category runs lower absolute shipping costs than Consumer Goods), and above-baseline conversion. That equilibrium has been the Health & Wellness baseline for most of this dataset.
What to do: With free shipping at 0.78x and shipping revenue recovering to 0.81x, check whether your current threshold is positioned to do productive work. Health & Wellness buyers at 0.88x AOV are transacting at a meaningful absolute level -- Health & Wellness absolute AOV is among the highest of any vertical tracked here. A free shipping threshold set 10 to 15% above that level will sit within reach for a meaningful share of buyers, and a progress bar will surface the gap. At 0.78x free shipping rate, there is margin to expand eligibility selectively without approaching the over-extended 0.99x reading of May.
AOV held at 0.88x for the third consecutive month. The below-baseline plateau is becoming structural.
Health & Wellness AOV has now posted three consecutive months at 0.87x to 0.88x: 0.87x in April and May, 0.88x in June and July. Four data points within a one-point range is not volatility -- it's a plateau. The vertical has been below baseline on AOV continuously since December 2025, and the plateau at 0.87x to 0.88x suggests this is where the category has settled rather than a transient dip that will resolve on its own.
The structural explanation is purchase composition. Health & Wellness AOV peaked at 1.04x in November 2025 when buyers were building full supplement and wellness routines -- multiple products per session, higher-ticket items, subscription stacks. The current plateau at 0.88x reflects a buyer mix dominated by single-product replenishment: one probiotic, one greens powder, one serum. These are loyal buyers completing reliably -- CVR is 1.05x -- but they're not building the multi-product baskets that drive AOV above baseline.
What to do: Three months at the same AOV floor is the signal to run a deliberate intervention rather than wait for the plateau to resolve. The intervention that works in Health & Wellness is specific and cart-aware cross-sell at the pre-payment step: not a generic recommendation module, but a prompt that identifies the product in cart and surfaces the one or two items that most frequently complete that buyer's routine. Pull your most common single-item order SKUs and build product-specific "complete your routine" pairings for each. Test whether surfacing that pairing at checkout moves the single-item session rate downward and the two-item session rate upward. In this vertical, that framing converts.
How does your H&W store's checkout compare?
Checkout Index tells you where your store sits inside this vertical: personalized Health Score, shipping signal analysis, and a revenue impact estimate based on your actual checkout.
Archive
Monthly archive: Health & Wellness
Every monthly dispatch, indexed and preserved. Use the archive to track how Health & Wellness checkout behavior has shifted over time, to validate whether seasonal patterns in your own data match the vertical.
August 2026 {{latest}}
CVR recovers to 1.05x after June's dip, extending above-baseline streak to twenty-six months; free shipping rate falls to 0.78x as May promotional expansion fully unwinds; AOV holds at 0.88x for third consecutive month at plateau.
CVR falls to 1.03x, lowest since March 2025; coupon usage hits dataset low at 0.67x; free shipping rate pulls back to 0.85x after May Memorial Day surge.
Free shipping rate surges to 0.99x, highest reading in the dataset; shipping revenue falls to 0.69x, series low; CVR holds at 1.06x for twenty-fourth consecutive above-baseline month.
Data begins June 2024 (baseline). Earlier dispatches available on request.
Methodology
About this dataset
The Health & Wellness dataset within the PDQ Checkout Benchmarks draws from aggregated, anonymized session data across H&W-categorized merchants on Shopify's platform. Merchants are classified using Shopify's standard industry taxonomy and must meet a minimum session threshold for inclusion. The H&W cohort spans supplement, skincare, personal care, and wellness device categories.
All figures are indexed to June 2024 = 1.0x. Figures exclude bot traffic, draft orders, and point-of-sale transactions. Data refreshes monthly, typically in the first week, reflecting the prior month's activity. Absolute conversion rates are not published; all metrics represent relative indexed change against the baseline cohort.
To compare your store's actual performance against this vertical, use Checkout Index.
