Shopify dashboard simulator: a store app you can tap on camera

First, the line you don’t cross

A store dashboard is the screen people use to judge whether a business is real, which is why it works in a skit and does damage outside one. This simulator is a prop for skits, parody, film scenes and product mockups, where the audience knows or is told the store is invented. It must never be shown to anyone as a real store’s sales: not to sell a course, a mentorship or a method, and not to a sponsor, a supplier, a lender or someone buying the business. That is fraud whichever tool drew the screen. Our acceptable use policy prohibits it, and accounts that do it are closed. If the scene is a prank on someone who knows you, the reveal belongs in the same scene.

Three things called a Shopify simulator

The search turns up three different tools under one word, so check you’re in the right place.

• A dashboard for the camera. A store app showing numbers you chose, for a dropshipping skit or any scene that needs one. That’s this page.
• A practice store. To learn the real admin or test a checkout, use the real thing: Shopify’s help centre covers placing test orders, and its partner programme has development stores. A prop can’t teach you where the real buttons are, because it’s an original design and not a copy.
• A business game. Ecommerce simulators that model pricing, ads and cash turn by turn are for practising decisions. Nothing here plays back: no shopper on this screen decides anything.

Pozer makes the first kind. The template behind its Shopify-style store dashboard is called Counter: an original design in the style of a modern store admin, with no Shopify name, logo or artwork and no connection to Shopify or to any store. You fill it in in the editor, publish it and get a link; added to a phone’s home screen it opens fullscreen from its own icon, under the name you gave it. Building it, installing it and filming it are free.

What it works out, and what you type

A picture with editable numbers lets every figure contradict the one beside it. A simulator earns the word by working some of them out. You type three counts, Total sales today, Sessions today and Orders today, each with its own change %. The app does the rest.

• Conversion rate has no field. It is orders divided by sessions. The defaults, 1,284 orders on 26,743 sessions, print 4.8%.
• Average order value has none either. It is sales divided by orders: $68,420.50 over 1,284 orders is $53.29.
• Their arrows follow. With sales up 38.2%, sessions up 24.6% and orders up 31.4%, Conversion rate shows ↗ 5.5% and Average order value ↗ 5.2%, so no arrow on the strip argues with another.
• The longer ranges are built from today. Last 7 days is 6.4 times today’s sales and orders, and Last 30 days is 26.3 times: $437,891.20 and $1,799,459.15 on the defaults. Sessions grow a little faster, so conversion slips to 4.5% and then 4.3%, and the changes shrink with the window: 38.2% becomes 17.2%, then 10.7%.
• The chart adds up. Today follows the twelve Sales by hour bars you drag, stretched to hours and roughened so it never reads as a ramp. The week and the month follow a weekday rhythm. A range always redraws the same line, so takes match.

What answers a thumb

The app opens on Home. A dark band carries the store’s logo or initial, its name, a bell with a red count and your initials. Below it, five things respond:

• The range pill. It reads Today. Each tap steps it to Last 7 days, then Last 30 days, then back, and every figure, every change and the chart move with it.
• The five metrics. Total sales, Sessions, Total orders, Conversion rate and Average order value sit in a strip that scrolls sideways. Tap one and it grows to full size while the chart redraws for that metric.
• The bottom bar. Four icons in a pill, for Home, Orders, Products and Menu, each opening its own screen.
• An order. Each row on Orders carries a number, an amount, a time, a customer and two badges, such as Paid and Unfulfilled. Tap one for its page: the customer, the line item with its unit price, then Subtotal, Total and Paid. On an unfulfilled order, Fulfill items turns the badge to Fulfilled, there and in the list.
• A pull. Dragging down on Home turns a refresh spinner.

The rest is set dressing, and a thumb will find it: the Report pill beside the visitor count, the bell, the search and assistant discs at either end of the bottom bar, the filter chips on Orders (All, Unfulfilled, Unpaid, Open, Archived) and on Products, the search and plus icons, Email details and Phone details on an order, every row on Menu from Customers down to Settings, and the product rows themselves. Plan the scene around the pill, the metrics and Orders.

Orders that arrive on their own

The part of a store a picture can’t fake is time passing. In the installed app, hold two fingers still on the screen until Edit appears, tap it and find Alerts. Choose Sales, set the Amount range, the gap under Every and the length under For, then tap Turn on alerts and allow notifications. From then on real notifications reach that phone at random moments, titled with your Store name and reading like “New order #1285 · $84.37 · 2 items”. On iPhone they need iOS 16.4 or later and the app on the Home Screen.

Each one is an order the app keeps. When the app next comes on screen, or you pull down on Home, #1285 is at the top of Orders as Paid and Unfulfilled, Total sales is up by its amount, and Total orders, the bell and Orders to fulfill are each up by one. Sessions rise in step, so Conversion rate holds where it was. Free alerts end in SIMULATED, like the mark on the app, and Pro removes it. Timing a take around one is its own subject, covered in the guide to fake Shopify sale notifications.

Set up a store that holds together

• Check the conversion the app prints. Because it is worked out, a careless pair of numbers shows at once: 1,284 orders against 8,940 sessions prints 14.4%. Keep it in the low single digits by raising Sessions today, not by hoping nobody looks.
• Let Average order value sit among your prices. The default products run from $46 to $312 and the average order is $53.29, which says most baskets are one cheap item. An average above your dearest product has no basket that explains it.
• Number the orders on purpose. Latest order number belongs to the top row, and each row below counts down by one. It is separate from Orders today, so a shop on its ninth order of the day can still be at #4311.
• Type counters, not round figures. 26,743 sessions reads as a count; 27,000 reads as a guess.
• Match the clock. Each order’s When is text you type, Today at 9:41 PM by default. Orders that arrive by alert are stamped with the phone’s own time, so an afternoon shoot wants afternoon times underneath.
• Use the two task cards. Orders to fulfill and Payments to capture each print a card under the chart, and a card set to 0 disappears.

Four scenarios to run

• The quiet shop. Total sales today 412.60, Orders today 9, Sessions today 388. The strip reads 2.3% and $45.84, and Last 30 days comes to $10,851.38 from 237 orders: a believable side business for a character who checks it far too often.
• The bad day. Change % fields take negatives. Sales at -22.4, sessions at -6.1 and orders at -18 turn every arrow to ↘ in red, and the app adds two of its own: Conversion rate ↘ 12.7% and Average order value ↘ 5.4%.
• The first order. 46, 1 and 31 print one order, 3.2% and a $46.00 average. Keep the thumb off the pill, though: Last 7 days would show $294.40 from 6 orders and Last 30 days $1,209.80 from 26, a history a first sale doesn’t have. The first-sale skit guide builds the whole scene.
• The launch. Drag the last few Sales by hour bars far above the rest so the Today chart spikes in the evening, then run alerts ten to twenty seconds apart while a character pulls down on Home and watches Total sales step up.

Put it on the phone, and reset between takes

1. In the editor, name the app and press Create home-screen app. It publishes to its own link, free.
2. Open the link on the phone you’ll film. On iPhone, use Safari, then Share and Add to Home Screen; on Android, use Chrome and choose Install app. From the icon it runs fullscreen with no address bar.
3. In the installed app the Edit button hides while you film. Hold two fingers still on the screen and it returns for five seconds; on iPhone the first hold asks you to sign in. The same fields are there, so numbers can change on the phone between takes.
4. The range, the chosen metric and a tap on Fulfill items last only while the app stays open. To clear orders that alerts added, open Edit and tap Reset to published values; the app reloads on Today with every order as you published it.

What it will never simulate

1. A real store. There is no login, no customer data and no payout behind any figure.
2. A live feed. The dot beside the visitor count pulses, and the count stays where you typed it.
3. Stock. An order arriving doesn’t lower any product’s count on Products.
4. A cash-register sound. Alerts carry none of their own; add it in the edit.
5. Filters and search. The chips and icons are drawn, not wired.
6. Somebody else’s store. The name, logo and icon are yours to supply, and another company’s are against our policy.

Free apps carry SIMULATED · POZER.COM in fine print under the chart on Home, on Orders, on Products and on each order’s page, which in a skit tells viewers the store is a prop; Pro at US$12.99/mo removes it. If you need a still for a thumbnail or a slide, not an app, the dashboard mockup guide covers exporting one, and choosing a sales dashboard for a scene covers sizing the numbers to a character. For a store that answers a thumb, start with the template.