Testing with Cart Preview

The Cart Preview lives in the right rail of the rule editor (on a narrow screen it moves below the editor) — no save-and-reload, no separate view. Add a few products, tweak a tier, and the discount applies in real time using the same engine that runs your live store.

How Cart Preview works

Cart Preview runs the real discount engine against a simulated cart. It’s not an approximation — the same code that evaluates customer carts in your live store evaluates the preview cart.

To use it:

1. Open any discount in the rule editor, or create a new one. The preview evaluates the discount you’re editing — its heading reads Applying <name> (draft) — including edits you haven’t saved yet
2. Click Add Product From Store to search your catalogue, or Add Custom Item to type a name and price. You can also open Sample carts and click a saved cart to load it
3. Change quantities or remove items, and the totals update as you go
4. Use Customer Scenario below the totals to test targeting: Customer role (defaults to — Guest —), Past orders, Total spent, Days since last order, Simulate date, Simulate time, Currency, Country, and Coupon codes

The Discounts tab has the same Cart Preview in its right rail. There it applies all active discounts together, so you can check how they combine.

What to test

Basic discount application

Start simple — add the products your discount is meant to apply to and confirm the discount fires and the amount is correct.

Tiers and thresholds

For tiered discounts (Spend & Save, Volume), test each tier boundary:

• Just below the threshold — discount should not apply
• Exactly at the threshold — discount should apply
• Above the threshold — correct tier should apply

For example, if you have “spend £50 → 10%, spend £100 → 15%”, test carts at £49, £50, £99, and £100.

Targeting conditions

If your discount targets particular items (Cart contains matching items in What triggers it?, or What the discount applies to in Rewards), test both sides:

• A cart with only qualifying products → discount applies
• A cart with only non-qualifying products → no discount
• A mixed cart → discount applies only to qualifying items (for product-level discounts)

Customer targeting

Cart Preview starts as a guest shopper. If your discount targets customers in Who is this for?, pick a Customer role and fill in Past orders, Total spent or Days since last order to match the shopper you want to test. Leave a past-customer field empty to use the real customer’s value, or type 0 to simulate a first-time customer.

Schedules

To test a discount from When does it apply?, set Simulate date and Simulate time. Left blank, they use today and the current time in your store’s time zone.

Coupon-activated discounts

Type the code into Coupon codes in Customer Scenario. Each code shows as a pill; one that won’t apply is marked — for example no such coupon or coupon is inactive. For a bulk coupon, pick one of its generated codes from the list: the seed code itself never applies.

Reading the preview output

Cart Preview shows:

Element	What it tells you
Discount line	Each discount that applied, with its cart label and amount (a DRAFT tag marks one with unpublished changes)
Line items	A Discounted by … or Free — … tag on items a discount touched
Spend-more nudge	The nudge text, while the cart is below the discount’s next tier
Total Savings / Estimated Total	The total discount and the final total (plus a Tax row on stores that show prices excluding tax)

Below the totals and Customer Scenario, Why this cart looks like this lists what was Applied to this cart and what Did not apply, with the reason — for example that the cart total doesn’t meet the threshold, or the date is outside the schedule.

Common issues to catch before publishing

Symptom	Likely cause
Discount doesn’t fire	Targeting conditions not met — read Why this cart looks like this, then check the thresholds and Cart contains matching items in What triggers it?
Wrong discount amount	Tier boundary off by one — check threshold values in Rewards
Spend-more nudge doesn’t appear	Include in spend-more nudges isn’t ticked in this discount’s Messaging section (it starts unticked), nudges are switched off in Message Settings, or the cart already meets the top tier
Discount applies to wrong items	The item sets include more than intended — review What the discount applies to in Rewards and the item sets in What triggers it?
Cart label shows default text	Custom label not saved — Dino auto-generates a label from the discount type when no custom label is set

Publishing after a successful test

Once Cart Preview confirms your discount behaves as expected:

1. Click Save Draft (or Done for an existing discount) to return to the Discounts tab
2. Click Publish changes in the You have unpublished changes banner
3. Review the What goes live summary
4. Click Publish changes in the modal

You can always roll back

Every publish creates a snapshot. If something looks wrong after going live, open the History tab and restore a previous state.