Links going to strange places

We all know that when people visit your website it's a privilege. So why are people so intent on confusing those valuable visitors?

There are lots of things that will confuse a web viewer. And when they get confused, they are more that likely to leave your site and go somewhere else - often to your competitor's site.

There are quite a few rants here about the sort of thing that will confuse and annoy your viewers but I don't think that I have (as yet) ranted about navigation which takes viewers away from your site. So here I go ...

There's nothing wrong with having links on your site to other sites; you may for example have a RESOURCES page which takes viewers to various types of useful information relating to your field.

What's going to drive people nuts though, is if those links are part of your navigation.

Let's say that you are going to have a shopping cart on your site that's developed by a third party. Don't have a navigation link that leads to an external site, please.

Unless you have a custom cart, which has been especially built and designed just for you, the chances are that it will not be a seamless move from your site to the third party site. Now matter how hard your shopping cart people try, and no matter how many graphics and style sheets we provide, it's just not going to look the same as the rest of your site. This disconcerts your viewers.

Your blog is likely to be te same if you are using third party blog software. You might have a login for a client database - there are any number of third party links that may be on your site.

So let's take the blog example. When a viewer sees BLOG in your main navigation, they expect to be taken to a page on your site. So they should be. They should be taken to a page on yourcompany.com which explains to them what your blog is about (a brief paragraph is fine). Then you can link to your blog as you have warned your viewers that they will be taken elsewhere.

This has other advantages, quite apart from being much more user friendly for your viewers.

• It adds another html page to your site that will find its way into search engines.
• It shows that you have consideration for your viewers.
• It allows you to see the popularity of that page in your site statistics.
• It absolves you of any blame should your third party application be down or slow. (And many often are).
• It gives you the chance to explain to your viewers what they can expect to happen.

Goodwill, happy viewers, fantastic data from your stats and another page working hard for you in the search engines - all good and all desirable.