Quick Reply on Forums
Quick reply is the easiest and fastest way that people communicate on forums, but still some admins feel the need to leave it off. The clicking of one button, "Reply," seems easy enough, but people seem to not like it when they aren't able to have the swiftness of a quick reply box. I have even found myself being frustrated by the fact there is still forums that lack a quick reply box.
Why Have A Quick Reply Option?
Convenience. As I mentioned above, most people don’t like having to go to a another page to reply. There is much convenience to having a quick reply box, such as the ability to “instantly” be able to reply to a post, the ability to see all the posts you are replying too and even the ability to format your post without going to the advanced editor. If you are able to do all that in a quick reply box, then I don’t see a reason for most people to even attempt or even wanting to go to the “advanced editor” posting form.
Encouragement. When you lack something like a quick reply box, then you are taking the chance of losing some members who just don’t feel like loading another page just to post. I always liked quick reply boxes, because they are always right there at the bottom of the forum directly in the user's face; which I think compels a lot of people to post because it’s directly in their face! When you make it as easy as possible to post on your forum, through a quick reply or something else, then people definitely are going to be more encouraged to post.
Less Loading and more bandwidth. Even though internet speeds and the availability of these speeds are increasing, there are still many people stuck on a connection that is comparable to dial-up or horrible DSL. So, even though it is easy for you to click over to the “reply page”, it might not be the same experience for your users. I think the quick reply helps slower connection users out a lot, because they are don’t have to load a total of 2 pages to create a response, but only one.
Also, if you are feeling a little tight on bandwidth and don’t have quick reply enabled then you might be able to reduce your bandwidth usage by a few megabytes. If people are loading less pages on your website, then that means you are going to be using less bandwidth. So, lets say you don’t have quick reply enabled, then that requires your users to load the thread and then to load the reply page. While with quick reply installed/enabled they only have to load one thing, the thread.
At this time, if you do not have quick reply enabled then you should really consider it. It will not only make it easier for your users to post, but you might even enjoy the faster posting ability yourself! Most forum softwares come with a quick reply feature built in, and if not, you can probably find a plugin or modification to get a quick reply box.
