Quarterly Commerce Marketing Benchmarks for Health and Wellness Brands
Overview and KPIs
Health and Wellness brands operate in a highly consideration-driven category, where shoppers balance routine purchases like vitamins and supplements with wellness exploration, product research, and seasonal trends. Understanding how, when, and where shoppers express purchase intent across digital touchpoints is critical to driving conversion and optimizing media performance.
MikMak’s quarterly Health and Wellness commerce marketing benchmarks provide a data-backed view of brand media trends, retailers displayed, and shopper intent across key global markets, helping brands contextualize performance and refine commerce-enabled activations across owned and paid channels.
This Q1 benchmark analysis is based on MikMak Shopping Index* data from January 1 to March 31, 2026.
The following proprietary MikMak Commerce KPIs were used:
- Purchase Intent Clicks
Measures high-intent shopper traffic by counting the number of times a shopper clicks through to at least one retailer during a single session within MikMak Commerce-enabled brand content. - Purchase Intent Rate
Measures the percentage of shoppers who click through to at least one retailer within MikMak Commerce-enabled brand content, signaling a strong conversion likelihood.
Q1 Health and Wellness Commerce Marketing Highlights
- Search and discovery shift: In the US, Google emerged as the top platform driving purchase intent, while TikTok nearly doubled its share, showing a move toward active research and creator-led discovery.
- Amazon and pharmacy growth: Amazon solidified its lead in the category, but CVS and Walgreens saw notable growth as US shoppers sought out specialized Health destinations.
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Owned channel efficiency: Brand websites maintained high conversion likelihood, proving their role as the primary engine for brand-loyal, transaction-ready shoppers.
United States
In 2025, shopper traffic grew steadily from a low point in January to a peak in June. However, 2026 saw a much faster start, with more shopper engagement in January and February than the year before.
Brand websites lead conversion likelihood
Purchase Intent Rates reached 39.2% on brand websites. Despite a slight decrease from 43.3% in Q4 2025, owned channels remain the primary driver of high-intent actions, reflecting a highly motivated audience.
While media reaches a much broader scale, its Purchase Intent Rate fell to 1.5% in Q1 (down from 5.4% in Q4). This decline indicates that brand investment likely pivoted toward awareness-led campaigns, attracting a higher volume of early-stage browsers rather than transaction-ready shoppers.
Paid social leads media traffic
Paid social remained the top traffic driver in Q1 at a 48.0% share of Purchase Intent Clicks. This was a slight decrease from 51.8% in Q4. Meanwhile, organic search grew to 27.8% (up from 22.5%).
Google moved to the #1 spot with a 46.1% share of Purchase Intent Clicks, overtaking Meta, which fell to 31.4% (from 45%). Notably, TikTok’s share of shopper traffic nearly doubled to 13.5%, suggesting it is a growing force for discovery in this category.
Convenience vs. expertise: The Q1 retail split
Amazon became the primary destination, capturing 34.0% of Purchase Intent Clicks (up from 28.5% in Q4). Conversely, Walmart (25.0%) and Target (10.2%) saw declines, while pharmacy retailers CVS (8.6%) and Walgreens (7.2%) experienced significant gains.
This indicates that while mass market giants remain dominant, shoppers are increasingly seeking out specialized Health destinations for their New Year goals, likely looking for a mix of expert-led credibility and local accessibility.
Key Takeaways
- Diversify discovery channels: With the rise of Google and TikTok, brands should balance traditional social spending on Meta with robust search and short-form video strategies to capture active researchers.
- Optimize for specific retail paths: As Amazon grows and pharmacies gain ground, brands must ensure product availability and easy paths to purchase across both mass convenience and specialized Health platforms, to cater to all shopper preferences.
- Enable commerce across owned and paid channels: While brand websites show high-intent and conversion likelihood, shoppable media serves a unique purpose by driving incremental sales and providing a clear window into the discovery phase engagement of the shopper journey.
Curious to see how MikMak helps brands connect marketing with commerce and unlock first-party shopper data? Schedule a demo today.
*The MikMak Shopping Index was developed to provide a standardized set of metrics, methodology, and benchmarks to help drive brands’ business results and strategy. It is a collection of key eCommerce KPIs from hundreds of brands, over 250 channels, and more than 8,000 retailer integrations worldwide, to understand consumer online shopping behavior.
