I heard a story once that Tabasco increased their sales after hiring a marketing consultant who came up with a very simple solution: make the hole bigger. Bigger hole = more Tabasco use. Could the same rule apply to comments on blogs?

A default comment form in a TypePad or Movable Type blog is 30 columns wide, and only allows for 4-6 words per line like this:



While one widened to 70 columns looks like this:



Notice how much easier it is to ready the full content of the post?

If you'd like your readers to contribute more than a one sentence comment in response to your posts, make it easy for them by providing a wider and more usable comments form.

If you run a Movable Type blog, you can widen your comments form by looking for the following line of code on your individual post template:

<textarea id="comment-text" name="text" rows="10" cols="30"></textarea>

Update the cols="30" to something greater. I settled on 70 for technologyevangelist.com. It may take some playing around with to find the optimum width for your blog, but it's almost certainly something greater than 30. The col variable sets how many characters are displayed per line. It effects wrapping within the form, but doesn't effect the layout of comments once published.

I discussed this issue earlier today with a TypePad blogger who said he couldn't change this variable on that platform. If that's the case (let me know in the comments if it isn't), it's time for TypePad to improve the usability of their platform.

SixApart (makers of TypePad), you have the power to improve the quality of conversations on blogs with one easy edit. Make comments more usable by widening the form! Then get around to doing the same thing on MovableType so users don't have to fix it after they buy it.