Every question worth asking.

Onboarding begins the first week of July 2026. Rex Commerce is taking 12 UK small businesses in this first cohort. Successful candidates are notified within two weeks of the waitlist closing. Joining the waitlist is free and includes an AI Visibility Check, but does not guarantee acceptance — fit is assessed against the eligibility criteria below.

Setup takes 60 to 90 days from the kickoff call. The exact timeline depends on platform complexity, catalogue size, and how quickly your team can review and approve schema, copy, and feed work. Most of week one is internal — capability profile drafting and feed mapping happen before any client review is needed.

The cohort programme covers the 60 to 90 day build: schema, feeds, UCP profile, merchant submissions, citation seeding, and conversion tracking. The retainer covers what keeps it working: catalogue freshness as inventory changes, citation tracking across AI assistants, ranking optimisation, and quarterly strategy. The build creates the asset; the retainer maintains its market position.

Yes. The Q4 2026 cohort is provisionally planned for mid-October, also UK-only and capped at 12 businesses. Joining the Q3 waitlist automatically rolls you onto Q4 if you aren't selected for the first cohort.

Rex Commerce® is the premium agentic-commerce tier of the AEO-REX service ladder. One-time setup is £897 and the ongoing optimisation retainer is £197 per month (cancel anytime). Year-one total is approximately £3,261 — comparable to a fractional employee, deliberately benchmarked against the parent service ladder so the work is accessible to SMEs not just established brands. The free AI Visibility Check confirms scope before any work begins, and a fixed-fee statement of work is signed before invoicing.

Technically yes, but not recommended. AI engines re-rank monthly, sub-processors update protocol specifications quarterly, and competitor citations shift weekly. Without ongoing optimisation, the build degrades within roughly 3 to 6 months. The retainer is what protects the setup investment.

Yes, currently. Rex Commerce serves UK-registered businesses only in 2026. Other regions (EU, US, Canada, Australia) are on a Q1 2027 waitlist. UK focus reflects how AEO-Rex is structured for compliance, payment, and the specific cultural-search patterns of UK buyers.

No revenue minimum. Rex Commerce® is priced specifically to be accessible to UK SMEs at any growth stage — £897 one-time setup plus £197 per month — so the door is open to early-stage businesses as well as established brands. The eligibility test is fit, not size: do you have a website and at least one product or service to promote, and are you serious about being recommended by AI assistants? If yes, the AI Visibility Check confirms whether Rex Commerce is the right tier of the AEO-REX ladder for you, or whether one of the lower-cost services on aeo-rex.com is a better starting point.

Yes. Two-thirds of Rex Commerce work applies identically to service businesses: AEO, schema, citation seeding, AI-referrer CRO, attribution. Only the agentic-checkout layer (ACP feeds, UCP product catalogue) is ecommerce-specific. Service businesses get a focused engagement that drops those deliverables and substitutes deeper authority work.

Shopify and Etsy already wire native ACP/UCP into their platforms. Most of what Rex Commerce builds custom for WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and bespoke stacks is already done by Shopify or Etsy at the platform level. You'd be paying for infrastructure you already have.

Three layers, in order: (1) Authority — entity clarity, third-party citations, and topical reinforcement so AI engines recognise you as the canonical answer for your category. (2) Discovery — JSON-LD product/service schema, ACP/UCP feeds, and merchant programme submissions so AI agents can read and recommend your catalogue. (3) Conversion — landing pages and attribution that turn AI-referred traffic into traceable revenue.

SEO optimises for ranked search results (ten blue links). AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) optimises for citation inside AI-generated answers — getting named when ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity respond. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is a near-synonym for AEO, with extra emphasis on how generative models compose answers from multiple sources. Rex Commerce covers AEO and GEO end-to-end, plus the agentic-commerce layer beyond either.

Schema markup is one of roughly fifteen things Rex Commerce delivers, and the version most SEO agencies install (Article, Organization, BreadcrumbList) is not the version AI agents act on (Product/Offer with ACP fields, Service with priceSpecification, FAQPage with speakable, Person with knowsAbout). Beyond schema, Rex Commerce handles feeds, capability profiles, merchant submissions, citation seeding, and AI-referrer attribution — none of which sits inside SEO scope.

Currently: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Apple Intelligence. Implementation rests on open standards (schema.org, ACP, UCP), so coverage extends to any future assistant that respects them. We track citation share across all six monthly.

Three metrics, monthly: (1) Citation share — how often you're named in AI answers for your top 25 category prompts vs. competitors. (2) AI-referred sessions and conversions — measured server-side, not via client pixels which AI traffic increasingly bypasses. (3) Schema/feed validation — confirmed parse success across each AI assistant. The dashboard is direct-access; you can see all three in real time.

A 7-day audit covering: current citation share across the six major AI assistants for your top 10 category prompts; competitor citation gap; existing schema audit; feed compatibility check; and a fit-for-Rex-Commerce assessment. It's free with waitlist signup, with no obligation to proceed.

Rex Commerce is the agentic commerce service line from AEO-Rex, a UK Answer Engine Optimisation agency founded by Shanaz. The team works with the Redbridge Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce on innovation programmes for AI visibility, and has presented at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Direct contact: shanazbegum@aeo-rex.com.