Three-phase implementation
Phase 1 — Prepare data and guardrails
- Ship a signal matrix: product feed fields, inventory, margin, intent events, support sentiment, and geo
- Define ACP data contracts for titles, descriptions, pricing, stock, GTIN/MPN, and media
- Write guardrails: price change limits, offer eligibility rules, rollback triggers, and operator alerts
- Enable MCP on WooCommerce 10.3+ for contextual APIs that feed ACP agents
Phase 2 — Connect ACP + instant checkout
- Install ACP feed plugin or REST webhook to publish product JSON (60+ fields) on cadence
- Expose delegated payments via Stripe tokens; test single-SKU instant checkout
- Create dark-mode pilots on 10 percent of traffic; log every decision and override
- Run QA on tax, shipping, stock sync, and fraud checks before raising coverage
Phase 3 — Optimize agentic experiences
- Deploy discovery agents that reorder collections and search suggestions by intent and margin
- Activate incentive concierge: test free shipping, bundles, and tiered discounts per cohort
- Add support-to-cart bridge so high-intent chats drop shoppers into prefilled checkout
- Review dashboards weekly: acceptance rate, overrides, conversion lift, cost per decision
Five answers your stakeholders want
What is ACP and why pair it with WooCommerce?
ACP standardizes how AI agents discover products, brief offers, and trigger instant checkout. WooCommerce already supports MCP, which supplies the context layer (inventory, customer signals). Together they let ChatGPT and other AI surfaces show ranked SKUs with live stock and launch compliant payments without building a new storefront.
Keep ACP feeds lean and clean. Remove draft products, map categories, and validate stock before publishing.
Which signals matter most for AI-driven merchandising?
Prioritize behavioral signals (views, search terms, scroll depth), commercial signals (margin bands, stock, shipping promise), and trust signals (reviews, returns). Store each signal with owner, format, refresh cadence, and fallback so agents never guess.
Add a column for data freshness and alert thresholds. Stale inventory kills trust fast.
How do you keep agents safe and auditable?
Use three layers: policy guardrails (price deltas, discount bounds), technical guardrails (latency SLOs, idempotent updates, rollback webhooks), and human guardrails (pager rules when overrides spike). Every agent decision should log inputs, outputs, and a reason code.
Schedule quarterly failure drills with corrupt feeds to confirm rollbacks and alerts fire before customers notice.
What does a minimal ACP feed include?
Title, rich description, canonical URL, price and compare-at, currency, stock, GTIN/MPN, category, images with alt text, shipping rules, and availability. Include locale and country targeting so AI agents avoid showing restricted SKUs.
Match SEO basics: clean slugs, structured data, and compression on all media before indexing.
How do you prove ROI?
Define a baseline for conversion rate, AOV, and support handle time. Track acceptance rate of agent decisions, override counts, incremental revenue versus control cohorts, and cost per decision (tokens plus ops). Report weekly deltas and freeze rollouts if override rate exceeds your threshold.
Pair ACP dashboards with finance-approved guardrails so leadership trusts the uplift numbers.
Technical checklist for launch
- • WooCommerce 10.3+ with MCP enabled
- • ACP feed endpoint with 60+ required fields
- • Stripe delegated payments tested in sandbox
- • Product media compressed and tagged with alt text
- • Tax and shipping rules mapped per market
- • Audit log for every agent decision and override
- • Guardrails for price, discounts, and stock limits
- • Alerting on override spikes and stale data
- • Rollback webhook to disable agents in seconds
- • Dark-mode traffic split with control cohort
- • Reporting dashboard with acceptance and lift
- • Weekly review cadence with finance and ops
Metrics to watch
Leading indicators
Acceptance rate, decision latency, override volume
Revenue signals
Conversion lift vs control, AOV change, repeat rate
Safety signals
Rollback count, policy breach alerts, payment failures