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: March 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.
March 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 AOV just hit its highest indexed reading. It's been climbing since October
Health & Wellness buyers don't add to cart the way Consumer Goods buyers do. They stack. A supplement routine includes a probiotic, a collagen, a greens powder. A skincare routine has a cleanser, a serum, and a moisturizer. That behavioral pattern (high-intent, category-educated, repeat-purchase-oriented) is what's driving AOV to its best indexed position across all six verticals we track.
The October through February trajectory is now five consecutive months of gain. For an Health & Wellness merchant, this isn't news to celebrate and move on from. It's a signal that your checkout is either keeping up with higher-value buyers or leaving their basket size on the table. The brands capturing this lift tend to have one thing in common: a free shipping threshold that's set above current average order value and progress bar messaging to close the gap.
What to do: Audit your free shipping threshold. If it's at or below your current AOV, you're not stretching the basket. You're gifting the shipping margin on orders that were coming anyway.
Free shipping pulled back 10 points from January's peak. Health & Wellness brands are recalibrating post-New Year
The Health & Wellness free shipping rate came in at 0.98x baseline in February, down from 1.08x in January, the highest reading the vertical had seen. That reversal is meaningful, and it's worth separating signal from noise before you act on it.
January's spike was predictable: New Year demand brought resolution buyers who were already high-intent and spending more. Many brands responded by lowering friction, including extending free shipping to capture volume. February's pullback doesn't indicate demand collapsed. It indicates brands tightened threshold logic as margins reset. But the merchants who dropped free shipping across the board may have recalibrated too aggressively: the buyers entering Health & Wellness for the first time in January are exactly the cohort where shipping cost at checkout creates the highest abandonment risk.
What to do: If you moved your free shipping threshold up in February, check your new-visitor abandonment rate at the shipping reveal step against January's baseline. A 2–3 point difference is within tolerance. Anything above that suggests you've priced out the buyers you just paid to acquire.
Health & Wellness conversion holds at 1.06x baseline: small outperformance, structurally consistent
The Health & Wellness conversion rate has sat above the all-industry baseline for eight consecutive months. The number itself (1.06x) is modest. What matters is the consistency.
In a vertical where buyers are doing research before they arrive at checkout, where ingredient comparisons happen on Reddit and dermatologist YouTube channels, and where the product purchase is often the end of a long consideration arc, conversion that's consistently above baseline is less about checkout UX and more about trust infrastructure. Free shipping progress bars. Visible return policies. Delivery date certainty. Subscription clarity. These are the elements that convert anHealth & Wellness buyer at checkout, and the brands holding above 1.0x baseline tend to have most of them in place.
What to do: If your conversion rate is below the vertical index, the diagnosis almost always starts at the shipping reveal step. Pull your checkout funnel drop-off by step and identify where you're losing Health & Wellness buyers. The fix is usually delivery date accuracy or free shipping threshold positioning, not a full checkout redesign.
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 H&W checkout behavior has shifted over time, to validate whether seasonal patterns in your own data match the vertical.
March 2026 {{latest}}
AOV hits series high for 5th consecutive month; free shipping rate begins recovery from February pullback.
Free shipping pulls back from January's peak; conversion holds above all-industry at 1.06x.
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.
