Don't Force New Windows On Your Visitors

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07.12.07

Don't Force New Windows On Your Visitors

By Steven Bradley

A couple of weeks ago Darren Rowse asked readers should (external) links open in a new window?.

Actually Darren had been asked by one of his readers and Darren was smart enough to know the question would make for a good blog post so he asked the rest of us. Today he read through all the comments and posted the results and surprisingly ProBlogger readers preferred to have a new window 54% to 45%. Surprising, because I think this is one of the worst things a site can do.

The main argument site owners give for opening a new window is to keep visitors on their site. In fact much of the time it's phrased as "I want to force my visitors to stay on my site." Forcing your visitors to do something is never a good idea. We're living in the age of respecting your visitors and being transparent to them. Forcing people is never a good way to earn their trust.

When I hear people say they want to keep visitors by not letting them leave it makes me wonder how much confidence they have in their content. If your content is good people will come back. You don't need to hold them hostage. I visit many websites multiple times in the same day. I visit, I leave, and I come back. I know you do the same thing. If you want to keep visitors give them a reason to return. If you have to keep visitors by refusing to let them leave then keeping them there isn't going to do you any good. If your content can't keep them they'll still leave.

Why do people think when you open a link in a new window you keep someone on your site anyway. That person has still left your site. They just happen to be in a different window. It doesn't matter, though. Either way they are not interacting with your site.

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When I'm surfing I open most links in a new tab. I do this myself without needing it done for me. I do it because sometimes as I'm reading I want to know what you've linked to, but I know I'm not ready to leave your site yet. Sometimes though, I am done with your site and when I'm ready to leave I don't appreciate not being allowed to. When you force a new window you take away the choice from your visitor. That's not showing them respect.

The technical arguments amuse me in regards to the issue. Some will tell you that non tech savvy users won't be able to figure out how to get back to your site. Really? Is the back ‘button' that hard to use? Please don't try to tell me that the ‘close' button is any easier to use. Someone who is confused by one is confused by the other. The person you hope to keep on your site is the one who continues on in the new window. You're hoping that when they do eventually close that window they'll see your site sitting there and start interacting with it again. The person who's gone off surfing for awhile in a new window is done browsing when they closed that window. That's why they closed it. You know what they're going to do when they see your site sitting there? They're going to close it too.

Let's pretend for a minute that you should open external links in a new window. That's going to be a fun web to surf isn't it. Every time you click a link a new window opens. How many links do you click over the course of a few minutes? Think of all the new windows you'll have open after an hour of surfing. Think of how slow your computer is going to be running with all those windows competing for the attention of your computers processor.

Continue reading this article.

About the Author:
Steven Bradley is a web designer and search engine optimization specialist. Known to many in the webmaster/seo community by the username vangogh, he is the author of TheVanBlog, which focuses on how to build and optimize websites and market them online.

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