Preview a draft on your real storefront
Valotrix Cart Rewards has two ways to test a campaign before you ship it to customers:
- The simulator - a fake-cart builder in the admin sidebar (Simulator). Fast, no real Shopify cart involved. Great for testing condition logic.
- The Preview button - a one-click signed URL that runs the draft campaign against your live storefront for the next 24 hours. Only people opening the URL with the token see the campaign; regular customers don't.
For a first campaign, use both. The simulator confirms the rule logic; the preview URL confirms it actually fires on your real theme with real products.
Use the simulator
Open the Simulator from the admin sidebar. Build a cart with your store's real products in the cart-builder panel; set context (logged-in state, market, country, currency) on the right. Click Run Simulation.
The results panel shows which rule matched and which gift would be added. For per-condition trace details, switch to Developer mode at the top of the page - it shows every condition's pass/fail with values, useful when a rule unexpectedly doesn't match.
Get a Preview URL
On the campaign edit page (top header, next to the Status dropdown) is a Preview button. It's available once the campaign has been saved at least once.
When you click it, Valotrix Cart Rewards:
- Generates a private link to your live storefront - looks like
https://yourshop.com/?vltrx_preview=<token>. - Copies the link to your clipboard.
- Opens it in a new browser tab so you can start testing immediately.
The link is valid for 24 hours, tied to your specific store, and tamper-proof - only people with the link see the draft campaign. Share it with a teammate, your phone, or a different browser to test multiple angles. Regular customers don't see anything because they don't have the link.
Preview history
The campaign edit page also shows a Preview history (last 7 days) panel - a log of every cart change that happened during your preview sessions and what Valotrix Cart Rewards did about it. Useful for confirming "yes, the gift fired when I tested" without having to re-watch the cart drawer.
What the simulator can't catch
The simulator runs the exact same rules as your live storefront, so the logic check is faithful - if the simulator says the rule fires, it fires live. But the simulator doesn't render your real cart drawer, theme widgets, or checkout, so visual bugs (e.g. a widget that overflows on mobile) only show up in the live preview. Use both.
Next: Go live →