Much to my dismay, it seems that some people still believe that opening external links in new windows “keeps users on your site.”
We have a part-timer who just spent her internship with us and now that school is back in session she is taking a web class and was asking some questions some of us about links. One of the things that came up is whether to link to other sites by opening in a new window. I am a big usability fan and see that practice as a negative experience for site users. And I have been hard-pressed to find any one other than clients who seem to think it is a good idea.
Until today that is.
Remarkably, one of the web designers (we’ll call him “Brett”) repeated this tired old line practically word for word. The most astounding thing is that when I said that it is pretty much accepted nowadays that it is for bad user experience and that if you are going to do it, at least let the user know with a little new window icon or some text, Brett wanted to know where I had read that.
Try an article and book dating back to 1999.
Not that Jakob Nielsen is the end all expert on all things (and he has been known to overstate things), but in this case there are hardly any real legitimate points to argue against it.
Which was what amazed me about the designer’s defense of the practice. See Brett’s only other full-time web job had been when he worked for a company that did well in the first dot-com heyday and his defense was that their company’s philosophy was that external links in new windows “kept users on the site”. What Brett couldn’t really defend when it was pointed out to him was that if the intent was to keep a user on the site, why in the hell would you link to another site in the first place? And that’s really what it boils down to.
Back in the day, when sites were supported by advertising that would auto-refresh every minute or so and they charged advertisers by how many impressions were delivered, linking to sites in a new window was a freaking gravy train. The customer would go offsite and forget that your site was hiding in the background quietly collecting impressions while you surfed other sites. But of course that is not how things work now, it’s just annoying. People don’t like that kind of shit - that’s why AOL and Earthlink pimp out that they offer pop-up blockers.
Another thing that I haven’t (yet) run across in all the articles regarding this antiquated practice is how it will throw off any traffic analysis on a site that may deal with time spent on a site.
When I report on site traffic and visitor behavior for customers, one of the things I list is time spent on the site. It is a strong indicator of what a customer is doing. Under 30 seconds, not what they needed at all. Under 2 minutes, maybe what they were looking for but not quite or they needed something really quickly (phone number, etc). Of course anything over an hour, probably a fluke. But if you shoot someone off to a new link, you skew those results completely.
So to sum it all up, regarding opening links in new windows:
- If you have to do it, let your user know (icon or text notice)
- If you want to keep users on your site, don’t link to anyone else. If you do link to some other site, suck it up and just link dammit.
- It will break the user’s favorite navigational tool - the “back” button
- It will cause the visitor to forget your site anyway
- It skews your “time spent on site” site traffic info.
And now for the final cliche summary…..
If you love something, set it free… blah blah blah. you know the rest. And it still applies.
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to go smack Brett upside the head with my 1st edition of Designing Web Usability.
UPDATE: It looks like the standard method of linking to a site in a new window (”target=’_blank’”) is deprecated and is not supported under XHTML strict. So find another way if you need to, like Javascript. But if Javascript is turned off, it will just link to the other site in the same window, so why waste the time with the extra coding in the first place?