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: September 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.
September 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 slipped to 1.02x in August, its second decline in three months and lowest reading since February 2025
Health & Wellness CVR recovered to 1.05x in July after June's dip to 1.03x, but August's reading of 1.02x is a step lower than June's trough and the lowest the vertical has posted since February 2025. The above-baseline streak that has defined this vertical for twenty-seven months is now holding by the thinnest margin -- 1.02x is above baseline, but the trend line over the last three months is unmistakably downward: 1.06x in May, 1.03x in June, 1.05x in July, 1.02x in August.
The pattern of declining CVR alongside declining FSR is a specific diagnostic in this dataset. When Health & Wellness free shipping rate falls and conversion follows, the most common cause is a threshold that has moved above where buyers are landing -- buyers who were previously clearing the free shipping bar in May are now encountering a shipping charge they didn't expect, and a share of them are abandoning. The FSR at 0.66x in August is the lowest the vertical has ever posted, a full 33 points below baseline, and it has fallen in four of the last five months.
What to do: The CVR and FSR trends in Health & Wellness are pointing at the same thing. Pull your August checkout funnel drop-off by step and compare the shipping reveal abandonment rate against May -- the last month before the FSR started its sustained decline. If abandonment at shipping reveal has increased by 2 or more percentage points, your threshold is the variable. Calculate where your threshold sits relative to your current 0.88x AOV and consider whether a downward adjustment of 8 to 10% -- paired with a progress bar for orders within range -- would recover the abandonment without giving away shipping margin on orders that would have completed anyway.
The free shipping rate fell to 0.66x in August, the lowest reading in the Health & Wellness dataset
Health & Wellness free shipping rate has been in sustained decline since the May surge to 0.99x. The unwind has been aggressive and continuous: 0.85x in June, 0.78x in July, 0.66x in August. Three consecutive months of sharp decline have brought the vertical to a level it has never previously reached in this dataset -- 34 points below baseline and 33 points below the June 2024 starting point.
The 0.66x reading is notable because it suggests the May promotional expansion has not just been reversed -- it's been overcorrected. The vertical was running at 0.76x before the Memorial Day surge. August's 0.66x is 10 points below that pre-surge level, meaning some brands appear to have tightened their thresholds beyond their original settings in response to the May margin absorption. That overcorrection is almost certainly contributing to the CVR softness. Buyers who completed reliably in April at 0.76x free shipping are encountering a more restrictive checkout in August and a measurable share are not completing.
What to do: Compare your current free shipping threshold against its April setting -- before the Memorial Day changes. If your threshold is now higher than April's, you've overcorrected and the CVR data is likely telling you so. Restore the April threshold as a baseline and run August's final two weeks against September's first two weeks to measure the conversion impact. A threshold that was working before Memorial Day is almost certainly the right anchor point for the fall season rather than the contracted post-promotional setting.
Coupon usage dropped to 0.60x in August, the lowest reading in the Health & Wellness dataset and the sharpest single-month decline since 2024
Health & Wellness coupon usage has been running below baseline throughout this dataset, but August's 0.60x is a step change rather than a gradual continuation. The vertical dropped from 0.69x in July to 0.60x in August -- a 9-point decline in a single month and the lowest the series has ever posted. For context, the prior floor was 0.67x set in June 2026. The vertical has now broken that floor by 7 points.
The coupon decline is happening at the same time CVR is softening and FSR is falling -- three metrics moving in directions that create compounding pressure on per-session revenue. But unlike CVR and FSR, the coupon decline in Health & Wellness is almost certainly not a problem to solve. This category's buyers have never been meaningfully code-motivated, and the 0.60x reading reflects the continued attrition of any remaining code-oriented buyer behavior rather than a signal that something in the promotional architecture is broken.
What to do: Don't introduce a coupon campaign in September to address August's three-signal pressure. Adding codes to a Health & Wellness checkout in a moment when CVR is softening and FSR is at a series low will reduce margin on buyers who were going to complete anyway while doing nothing to recover the buyers who are abandoning at shipping reveal. The coupon is the wrong variable. The threshold is the right one. Fix the threshold, measure the CVR recovery, and leave the coupon rate to find its own floor.
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.
September 2026 {{latest}}
CVR slips to 1.02x, lowest since February 2025; free shipping rate drops to 0.66x, lowest in the dataset; coupon usage falls to 0.60x, new series low.
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 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.
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.
