A Personal Blog
Off-Site Popups
Just had a discussion about this at work. The generally accepted standard for launching new sites in their own window is: if a user is leaving your site from a link, make it a new window.
I do this here at Ensight because it’s been the standard I’ve worked with for over a decade.
But, really, why do we do this? Why do I do this? Why are we doing it at work?
Fear, obviously, but practically speaking I don’t really see much of a benefit. New research shows that 80% of people’s first instinct is to use the back button when they want to go back. That includes in your site (hello breadcrumb trails?).
Opening things in a new window may not actually keep people on your site, it may in fact stop them from returning as easily, since closing a window is something users admittedly hate to do.
Any thoughts on this? Trying to reconcile my experience with the new paradigm that it may not be best for users or companies…
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on January 15, 2004 at 11:23 am, and is filed under IT Thoughts. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
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about 8 years ago
I used to follow a similar practice, but for the reasons you stated in your entry, I no longer do. A web savvy user understands what is going on when this happens, but more and more people getting on the Internet are *not* very technologically proficient. A website that is trying to reach a broad market of people should probably avoid the “off-site” popup technique.
However, in some situations, there can be advantages to this technique. If a user is just opening a link to a picture or code snippet (“figure 1″), then opening a new window can be the best choice for display.
I recommend putting a little icon next to links that will open in a new window so that users can be aware of what is going to happen when they click.
about 8 years ago
I got accused of underhanded pornsite tactics when I started redirecting people that were hitting printpage versions of my page and the not the actual page from Google… simply because I wanted them to see the page as it was designed. So I think it’s fair to say that regardless of how you ferret users around, someone will be confused by it. My general practice is to shift click everything anyway, especially with tabbrowsing like in Firebird, but then ask any non tech savvy what Firebird is and they’d probably tell you it’s a car… :p
But Jeff’s idea of a little icon for internal is excellent… I do a similar thing… but just adjust how the links look (colour/underline style etc.) depending on whether the link stays internal or goes external :)
about 8 years ago
I meant to say the user got annoyed because he’d lost the Back button as Jeremy pointed out in his article… so yeh… :)