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The sales post should be as close to
the top of your hatchery as possible!
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Think of it this way: if your hatchery were an actual store the first post would be the shop window. You want to entice your customer to enter and look around. After that, though? Imagine walking into a store and finding empty shelves with posters of what may one day fill them (ie. pair lists), or a string of other shops where similar things are sold (ie. affiliates).
It's not uncommon for hatcheries to have such a strange layout that it's actually hard to find what is for sale!! Don't lose customers over a confusing layout.
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Limit pre-hatchling content to:
- Your hatchery banner
- A welcome message
- Your rules section (more on this later)
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Why not jump right into hatchling sales, if they're so important? Simple.
You put your hatchery name up top so customers know where they're shopping. If you put your rules anywhere else but right below that title, no one's going to read them and they're important. Same with any welcome message you wish to add.
So, that's your first post and your second, but what about the rest of your thread?
What sort of hatchery are you creating? Is it a joint-run hatchery that you are opening with one or several other friends? Or perhaps a lore-based hatchery? Maybe you plan to sell dragons and offer coliseum training for them? If you haven't decided yet take a moment to consider because it will affect the rest of your content.
A thread will show ten (10) posts per page. Your hatchery doesn't have to be that long but definitely
do not make it longer! You want to make sure all the important content displays on the front page so customers don't have to dig to find what they are looking for. If your thread is growing long eliminate some of the extra sections so everything can fit (don't cram those sections together into one post!). You may wish to claim all ten front-page posts in your new hatchery thread, whether you have plans for them or not, because this will give you room to grow later without having to restart a new thread. For a placeholder you can place a small image, or simple text. This will also preserve the front-face of your shop -- no clutter!
Here's an important made-up word to remember: scrollability. This is how often you have to scroll to get from the top of your hatchery to the bottom. If you have to scroll more than twice to get from the top post to your sales you probably need to edit more!
Most of your customers will navigate your hatchery by scrolling, so increase scrollability (ie. how user-friendly your shop is) by streamlining content and presentation.
If this is all starting to sound complicated, don't panic! Your hatchery will evolve, and that's a good thing! It's not just the hatchlings you offer that will change, you may wish to add or remove certain features in your shop as you learn what you enjoy. This is a good thing and never hesitate to experiment. Hatcheries are a lot of work, but they should also be fun!
Browse other hatcheries in the
Dragons for Sale forum as if you are shopping for a dragon. Take special note of any layout choices or features you might like to include in your shop: some hatcheries offer a 'featured hatchling' section, others have a space to share breeding projects in progress, and so on.
While you browse, consider bookmarking shops that you like or that share a similar theme to yours, you may wish to affiliate with them (we'll cover that further on).
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Recommended Minimum Content to Include
- Intro: Welcome and/or Rules post
- Sales Section
- Breeding Pairs
- Pinglist
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This guide gives a walk-through for setting-up the core of a hatchery (listed in that little box above) as well as affiliates, but you can easily fit additional sections around and in-between the core components of your hatchery, all you need to do is ...
Organize all of your content based on your customer! You want them to shop at
your hatchery, so your sales and your pairs will come before your affiliates. But your pinglists are only relevant to you so they should go
below your affiliates. If you get stuck just imagine your hatchery as a shop to visualize the layout.
Your intro & rules tell your customer how you do business and are therefore the most important part of your hatchery, followed closely by what you are selling right now: your sales section.
Sold dragons? Not so relevant to your customer but relevant to you: place somewhere below your pairs and your affiliates (the potential of something they can buy trumps something that's already sold). Clan lore related to the pairs in your hatchery? Your customer will be interested in that if they are buying the dragons for lore reasons: place close to your pairs list.
Repeat this process as needed.
Remember: It's about Scrollability! If you are listing your sold dragons do not include full-size pictures, use avatars! Keep text and images concise, and break-up each section to help your customer quickly find what they're interested in.
I strongly recommend placing each section of your hatchery into a new post! This allows you to link directly to a section, which means your customer can access relevant content faster.
Most customers will peruse your shop by scrolling -- top to bottom and back again -- so scrollability is key, but imagine walking through a store that is just one long and narrow hallway! Now, imagine that you're looking for something specific in that shop but you have to walk that whole hall to get to what you're looking for (if it's even there! How can you know?)
ex. A lore hatchery will receive lots of business from people interested in lore but some customers might just want a pretty dragon --it's still business! But if the hatchery forces a customer to scroll through lots of written content before the sales or pairs the customer might decide the shop isn't for them -- lost business!
Or what if someone is browsing that same hatchery but before they make a purchase they want to see if the lore will fit with their clan, but they have to scroll through all the sales and pairings before they can read that lore?
The easier you can make it for your customer to find what they are looking for, the more likely they are to stick around! I include a navigation bar in each post in my hatchery (as I have also done in this guide), and I encourage everyone to do this. More options for navigation can only be good!
There are many reasons for starting a joint hatchery, not the least of which is spreading out the workload. To make sure your hatchery is successful it's important that your partner(s) are equally active on FR, and also that you can communicate well together and come to suitable compromises if need be.
That's all the internal business, though.
From the outside your joint hatchery should look like a single shop. The art, the formatting, and the way you do business should be consistent between each member. Minor differences are okay, but otherwise it's probably better to open separate hatcheries or it risks becoming too much work for one individual and/or too confusing for the customer.
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DO...
 Discuss art prior to commissioning
 Split cost of graphics for the hatchery
Divide sections to spread-out work
Have links list in every post
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DO NOT...
Have one person responsible for all posts
Use wildly different colours/styles in posts
Have different layouts between you
Have separate rules between you
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