Keep Your Website Visitors Longer With This Quick Tweak
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Keep Your Website Visitors Longer With This Quick Tweak
We all work very hard to drive targeted traffic to our blogs, squeeze pages, sales pages only to find out that our visitors leave very quickly before they even have a chance to look around at our great content and special offers.
Why they leave quickly may be due to many reasons but for this post I want to focus on something that we can easily correct and control.
I see this happening on many blogs and yes even on well established sites run by experienced webmasters. We do it to ourselves and don’t even know it.
Within our posts we often hyperlink to another site or a product sales page that we’re promoting. This can be through a text link or an image link and even a advertisement on our side bar. Now there’s nothing wrong with linking away from a site, however, not directing that link to open in a new window is like telling the visitor “here’s your hat – what’s your hurry” as we push them out the door.
It’s happened to me and I’m sure I’m not alone, I’ve clicked on a link within a blog post and was quickly taken to another site. As I get reading that site I click on more links leading me further and further away from the original blog. Even if I wanted to go back it would be difficult to retrace my steps and really not worth the time it would take. That site just lost me in cyber space.
There is a very simple solution to this. Make sure that any hyperlink is set to open in a new window.
I use and prefer WordPress, so I’ll show you how to create a text link with a target to a new window directly from the WordPress Dashboard – Post.
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highlight the word you’d like to create a hyperlink with – above example is Niche Site Club
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click on the hyperlink symbol in the toolbar
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the insert/edit link box will appear
- insert link URL
- in the Target section – use the drop down arrow to choose “Open link in new window”
Desktop Publishing Software and HTML editing software will have similar features to allow you to target links to new window
If you want to use HTML code it would look something like this except you’d replace the URL with yours.
<a href=”http://www.reachsuccessonline.com/likes/nichesiteclub” target=”_blank”>Niche Site Club</a>
and display like this:
The beauty of creating links that open in new browser windows is that when the visitors finally close that external page they’ll be back at your site reading more of your great content and looking at your special offers once again.
Oh ya and always test the links to make sure that they work and that the open in a new window.
In a future post I’ll talk about how to edit your affiliate banners so that they also open in new windows.
Do your links open in a new window??
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25 Comments
December 17th, 2009 at 2:59 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Luca Di Nicola, Brett McEllhiney. Brett McEllhiney said: RT @rsonline Keep Your Website Visitors Longer With This Quick Tweak http://bit.ly/8EOMb5 [...]
December 17th, 2009 at 3:23 am
I agree that opening the link in a new window will keep the website visitors longer, more or less, but sometimes I was just too lazy to do that.
[Reply]
Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hi Young, it does take a lttle more time when posting or creating a web page but when you do it all the time it becomes like a habit
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December 17th, 2009 at 3:49 am
I have always, well, at least for the past two years, have my links open in the same window. I’m not sure why, but it’s probably because I like to be able to control this myself when I’m at other websites. I always right click and click on open link in new window if I want it to open in a new window.
I see your point, and it’s interesting. A while ago, I read a poll at problogger about whether links from your blog should open in a new window or not.
Pro Blog Design’s opinion is that links should not open in a new window. I’m not sure what I think
Jens P. Berget´s last blog ..Students Recruiting Students By Blogging
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hi Jens, it really is a personal preference. When I’m browsing and reading other blogs I like pages to open in new windows – so I guess that’s why I do it on my sites. I do think that it’s not needed on links that lead to internal pages though
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December 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I see your point but personally I don’t like opening too many windows or tabs. It just cluttered the desktop. I prefer to let visitors to decide if they want to hit back button to continue exploring my site after visiting the external link.
Zaheer´s last blog ..How to customize More tag in WordPress
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Hey Zaheer,
I know what you mean about having too many widows open at once. You should see my physical desk – many folder open there. That’s just the way I work though, I like to have thing quickly available to review. As you say it is a personal preference. Thanks for the commentd
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December 17th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I can sort of see not opening a new window before the advent of tabs. However, with most browsers having tabs I see having a new window open as not only keeping your visitors on your site but extending them a courtesy.
Rod Macbeth´s last blog ..Keurig Single Cup Coffee Makers
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Hey Rod,
Good point about the new browsers with tabs. I use Firefox but know that IE also has tabs. I like having links open in new windows when browsing too
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December 17th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Luca, good post and an excellent tutorial on how to get your links to open the page in a new window. I have been doing that. I also appreciate it when I am reading a blog post. I hate it when I am reading a post and click on a link in the post and all of a sudden the post that I was reading is gone and I have to hit the back button to get back to the post.
Not much different in effort but I perfer to click to close the page that was opened than to hit the back button to get the post back. Besides what if there is something on the page that opened that I want to keep around for a while. Using the method you outlined both pages are available until I am read to close them.
Lonnie Minton´s last blog ..Your List Is Your Affiliate Marketing
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Thanks Lonnie,
With me I sometimes unintentionally close the widow instead of hitting the back button. Then it’s difficult to get back to the original site. It’s becoming clear from the comments though that it is a personal preference
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December 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Being aware of whether your links will open in a new window is important as there are times that you will want it but it is not always necessary when someone isgoing where you want them to go.
If the point of the post is to get them to a sales page and they do that there is no real reason to open it in a new window.
Mike Paetzold´s last blog ..What is PLR? A great video from Nicole Dean
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:37 am
I agree Mike that if linking to an internal page it’s not necessary to have the page open in a new window. I still like to have sales page links open in a new window so that I can go back to the original post that was mentioning the product
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December 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Great tip Luca,
I have seen a lot of people send people away from their website through links like this. I always try to make my external links open in a new window and in some cases I will even use this on internal links, where I want them to come back to a certain page when they are done.
BTW: Thanks for using the post you created for my Niche Site Club $1 Trial as an example!
Brett McEllhiney´s last blog ..Creating a Paypal Button for Your Niche Site Sales Page
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Luca Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Well said Brett, I agree and that’s how I use them too,
Thanks
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December 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by rsonline: Keep Your Website Visitors Longer With This Quick Tweak | Internet Marketing Explained http://bit.ly/7bAydO…
December 17th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Some people consider it bad form to force links to open in a new window. I personally think that people should be given a choice on whether or not they want it to open. If your content is good enough, they’ll either press the back button, or they’ll ctrl-click to open in a new tab. That being said, there are certain cases where I open links in a new window, and those are usually paid links where the script forces me to.
Tamahome Jenkins´s last blog ..7 iPhone Apps for the History Geek
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December 17th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Stop the leakage and leep visitors on your site longer. I been doing this new window trick for a long time and I def thing it help.
Nice to see I was on the right track
John Paul´s last blog ..Make Money Blogging: Tips To Earn More With Your Blog
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December 17th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Personally I hate sites opening in new windows and have my browser set to stop it happening so I don’t normally use this tactic.
Work at Home Aidan´s last blog ..Small Business Ideas & Personality
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December 17th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Great step by step directions. My rule of thumb that I tell my clients is:
1. If you are linking within your own site, open in the same window (there is nothing more annoying than clicking on a site’s navigation link to find EVERYTHING opens in a new window)
2. If you are linking outside your own site, open in a new window.
Blog Brain´s last blog ..Marketing Christmas Carol – Come all Ye Bloggers
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December 17th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
BTW – it is the first time I have been to you site and when I clicked submit for my comment a notifier popped up – COOL! What app are you using and where can I get one? Great list building tool!!
Blog Brain´s last blog ..Marketing Christmas Carol – Come all Ye Bloggers
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December 17th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
This is one of those simple, yet very important things that web site owners need to understand and implement. I have got in the routine myself to automatically right-click on a link to open it in a new window (or tab), without even first trying to see how it opens.
Just about every external link on my site I make sure to open in a new window.
Joel Osborne´s last blog ..Repeat Buyers – How To Keep Them
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December 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Luca, you are so right with this – I have had it happen to me plenty of times before when I am on a site and start clicking on a link that takes me away from that site. After 5 or 10 minutes of further “surfing” you remember that there was this great site you visited in the first place and then you can’t find it any more, unless you remember the domain name. I open all my links on my blog in a new window.
Petra Weiss´s last blog ..Bloggers Help Each Other Out….
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December 24th, 2009 at 7:30 am
[...] Keep Your Website Visitors Longer With This Quick Tweak [...]
December 29th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Thanks for sharing this technique. I totally agree with you. As a reader, I usually do the right click to be able to open a new window. It’s a little bit time consuming, but I make it to the point that I still have the original site to avoid any hassle.
Mark´s last blog ..School Grants For Minorities
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