What a turn represents
Setup is turn 0 (business type, niche, difficulty, starting cash). After that, each executed turn is one decision cycle: you choose marketing, product, conversion, and retention actions; the engine updates metrics and cash; random events and difficulty rules can fire. There is no fixed end date—you play until you reset or (on harder settings) hit a cash or debt failure.
Think of a turn as a compressed planning period, not a literal calendar month. Use it to feel timing and trade-offs, then map winners onto your real reporting cadence.
Niche baselines
Starting conversion rate, AOV, retention, LTV, and CAC come from niche baselines in the simulation engine (for example fashion vs supplements vs electronics). Gross margin is also clamped by niche so you cannot invent a 90% margin apparel store without consequences. Hard mode multiplies acquisition pressure so careless paid spend burns cash faster.
How margin and cash move
Revenue each turn is driven by traffic × conversion × AOV (with action and event modifiers). Cost of goods and other variable costs pull contribution; paid actions spend cash immediately. Cash runway is the failure constraint on stricter difficulties—positive ROAS with negative cash is still a failed run.
The advanced dashboard can show illustrative cohort retention curves and extended metrics. Those curves are teaching defaults (for example an indexed 12-month retention shape), not your store’s cohorts. Pair them with our unit economics and contribution margin glossary entries when you want formula-level definitions.
Traffic, CAC, and LTV
Paid and organic actions shift traffic and effective CAC. Retention actions lift repeat purchase and LTV with lag—neglect decay and consequence chains mean one-off spikes do not stick forever. Channel attribution in the UI is a simplified split for learning, not Meta/Google multi-touch truth.
What we intentionally simplify
- Tax, VAT, and multi-currency accounting are out of scope.
- Inventory can matter in scenarios, but warehouse networks and lead-time SLAs are abstracted.
- Ad platforms are not live APIs—CPMs and ROAS respond to rules and RNG, not your account history.
- Valuation and leaderboard scores are game scoring, not diligence-ready enterprise values.
How to use the numbers
- Change one lever per run (price, creative spend, CRO) and note cash and contribution.
- Write down the assumption that broke (margin too thin, CAC too high, retention too slow).
- Re-check that assumption in your analytics or a spreadsheet—see simulator vs spreadsheets.
Full walkthrough: what the ecommerce simulator is and when to use it. Play: Ecommerce Simulator. Editorial stance: editorial standards.