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Posted by Jaxtraw on 05/07/06 17:31
William Hughes wrote:
> Since I am in the process of building a personal website (
> http://home.grandecom.net/~cvproj/carrier.htm ) that will contain
> numerous links to other sites, I have been following this discussion
> with some interest.
>
> What if the links are explicitly marked, indicating that they will
> open a new window? Would this be acceptable?
It really depends on your purpose. New window's primary advantage is that it
keeps your site available easily for the user to go back to. My example of a
commercially orientated link list- I don't want them to "lose" that site
because I'm trying to extract as many clicks on that site out of the traffic
as possible. I'm not interested in enhancing their browsing experience in
general- I'm interested effectively in farming the traffic. The only limit,
as with say commercial advertising, is not to irritate the surfer so much I
lose them through annoyance. So that's the balance to be struck.
This all sounds very shiny-suit but really it's practicality. If you have
normal links, the user clicks one, wanders off clicking more links, and
rapidly forgets your site. So "target=_blank" is far more efficient if
having on to surfers is your game.
What it comes down to- if you have an external link on your site and you're
keen to hang onto the person clicking it, do a target="_blank". Experience
shows it vastly increases the chances of them coming back to your site and
clicking something else, or reading more of your site. A lot of people don't
like the idea of this "manipulation" but it's only the same process that
goes on throughout the rest of our media-rich society. Get somebody's
attention and keep them as long as possible, and that often means mild
trickery. Web utopians insist that if your site is wonderful is all that
matters, but really people are as flighty and fickle as bumblebees and
they're easily lost.
That's my view anyway.
Ian
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