BUY-3356 HN US Launch A/B Test Variants — Apr 23
Created: 2026-04-19 Channel: Hacker News (Show HN) Campaign: buy3356-hn-us-launch Status: Draft — pending final review
A/B Test Overview
| Variant | Title | Hook | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | "Show HN: Structured product catalog API for AI shopping agents — 2M US products covered" | Product-count framing | Baseline |
| B | "Show HN: We built the Stripe-like payments API for AI agent commerce — covers 2M US products" | Credibility framing | +25% vs A |
Kill criteria: If after 500 clicks B < 50% of A conversion
Variant A: Product-Count Framing
Title: Show HN: Structured product catalog API for AI shopping agents — 2M US products covered
Body:
We just expanded BuyWhere to cover 2M US products across major e-commerce platforms, and wanted to share what this means for developers building AI shopping agents.
The short version: if you've been building shopping agents that scrape merchant pages or deal with inconsistent product data, BuyWhere is the structured retrieval layer we wished existed.
What's new for US developers:
- 2M+ US products across Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and major US retailers
- Real-time prices, availability signals, and affiliate purchase links
- MCP server for tool-calling agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, etc.)
- Sub-100ms search responses
Example query:
curl -s "https://api.buywhere.ai/v1/search?q=sony%20wh-1000xm5&limit=5" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer bw_live_xxxxx"Returns structured JSON with merchant, price, availability, and affiliate links — no HTML parsing required.
The problem this solves: Most AI shopping demos work fine until you need reliable product data. Scrapers drift, storefront HTML changes, and price comparison across merchants becomes a full-time data engineering job. BuyWhere handles the normalization so your agent doesn't have to.
Docs: https://api.buywhere.ai/docs?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a MCP Guide: https://api.buywhere.ai/docs/guides/mcp?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a Free API key: https://buywhere.ai/api-keys?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a
Variant B: Credibility Framing
Title: Show HN: We built the Stripe-like payments API for AI agent commerce — covers 2M US products
Body:
Stripe gave payments a clean API layer so developers didn't have to deal with payment processor spaghetti. We did the same for product data.
BuyWhere is the structured product catalog API for AI shopping agents — 2M products across US retailers, normalized into a consistent shape that agents can actually work with.
Why this matters: Building a shopping agent that actually works across multiple merchants means dealing with: different product IDs per retailer, inconsistent availability signals, promotional pricing ambiguity, and HTML that changes without warning. We've handled all that normalization so your agent doesn't have to.
What you get:
- 2M+ US products across Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and major US retailers
- MCP server for tool-calling agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, etc.)
- Real-time prices, availability, and affiliate purchase links
- Sub-100ms search responses
Example query:
curl -s "https://api.buywhere.ai/v1/search?q=sony%20wh-1000xm5&limit=5" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer bw_live_xxxxx"Returns structured JSON — no scraping, no HTML parsing, no merchant-specific handling.
If you've been building shopping agents and hitting the data reliability wall, this is what we wish existed when we started.
Docs: https://api.buywhere.ai/docs?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b MCP Guide: https://api.buywhere.ai/docs/guides/mcp?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b Free API key: https://buywhere.ai/api-keys?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b
UTM Links
| Variant | Docs | MCP Guide | API Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-a |
| B | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b | ...utm_campaign=buy3356-hn-us-launch-b |
Execution Notes
- Timing: Post on Apr 23 between 9-11 AM PT (12-2 PM ET) for peak HN traffic
- A/B Assignment: Use UTM parameters to track which variant drove signups
- Engagement: Seed with thoughtful comments responding to objections
- Kill decision: Monitor click-through and signup rates after 500 clicks per variant
- Primary metric: Signup conversion rate (visitor → API key)
Blocker
External HN account access required for actual posting. Content is ready to publish on Apr 23.