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Get started with WooCommerce

About 5 minutes · WordPress 6.4+ · WooCommerce 8.0+ · PHP 8.1+

AnswerEng asks AI answer engines the buying questions your shoppers ask, and measures how often your products come back recommended. The AnswerEng for WooCommerce plugin connects your store: it sends your product catalog to AnswerEng and shows the results in your WordPress admin.

  1. Get your free API key

    Enter your email address on the sign-up form. Your API key arrives within a minute from keys@answereng.io. If you don't see it, check your spam folder.

    The Free plan covers one store and 10 monitored questions, sampled monthly. No payment card is needed.

  2. Install the plugin

    In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin, search for AnswerEng for WooCommerce, then click Install Now and Activate. WooCommerce must already be installed and active.

    If you have the plugin as a zip file, use Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin instead.

  3. Add your API key

    Go to WooCommerce → AnswerEng Settings, paste your API key, and click Save. Everything else is optional:

    • Brand names default to your site title. Add any other names shoppers know you by.
    • Competitors are the brands shoppers compare you with. Add a few to see your share of voice.
    • Store key defaults to your site's domain. Engine URL stays blank to use AnswerEng's hosted service.

  4. Send your catalog

    Click the sync status pill at the top of the AnswerEng screens, then click Sync now. The sync runs in the background and takes a minute or two. It sends each published product's SKU, title, short description, price, category, and attributes. It never sends customer or order data.

    Turn on auto-sync to keep AnswerEng current as you edit products. Otherwise the plugin syncs nightly. Each sync covers up to 5,000 published products.

    To confirm everything works, click Test connection on the settings screen. It should say Connected.

  5. See your first results

    After your first sync, AnswerEng writes buying questions from your catalog and samples AI answer engines (currently Claude, Perplexity, Mistral, and Llama) on your plan's schedule. First results arrive within about four weeks on the Free plan, and within a week on Starter and Pro.

    Results appear under WooCommerce → AnswerEng:

    • Overall visibility: how often your products are recommended, with a 95% confidence interval. A narrow range means a solid number; a wide one means the picture is still forming.
    • Per-engine presence and a visibility trend across runs.
    • Share of voice: how often you're recommended compared with your competitors.
    • Drafted fixes: for each question you were missing from, a diagnosis and a ready-to-copy draft. Nothing on your store changes until you apply a fix yourself.

Troubleshooting

Test connection says AnswerEng rejected the API key

Copy the key again from your welcome email, paste it, and click Save before testing. Keys are case-sensitive and must not include spaces.

Test connection says the engine may be waking up

AnswerEng's database pauses when it's idle and takes a few seconds to resume. Wait about 20 seconds and try again.

The sync log says the sync was skipped

The sync log on the settings screen explains why: usually there's no API key yet, or the store has no published products. Fix that, then click Sync now.

I lost my API key

Email support@answereng.io from the address you signed up with and we'll send you a new one.

Building your own integration? The API reference covers sending a catalog and reading results directly.

Questions? hello@answereng.io