Should Links Open in a New Tab? (Spoiler: No.)

Every few months, a client emails me with the same request: “Can you make all our external links open in a new tab? I don’t want people leaving the site.”

I get it. You worked hard on that website. You don’t want visitors wandering off into the wilds of the internet, never to return. Forcing a new tab feels like a tidy little leash. They click, they peek, they come back. Everyone wins.

Except that’s not what happens.

What actually happens is your visitors get annoyed, confused, or quietly locked out — and they leave anyway. Some of them were ready to buy. You just made the exit messier.

Let’s talk about why this “helpful” little setting is costing you customers.

You can’t trap people on your website

This is the part nobody wants to hear. If a visitor wants to leave your site, they’re going to leave. They’ll close the tab. They’ll hit the back button. They’ll open a new window. They’ll throw their laptop in a lake. The internet is full of doors, and you don’t get to lock them.

What you can do is make the experience smooth enough that they want to come back on their own. Forcing new tabs does the opposite. It tells visitors, “I don’t trust you to navigate my website like a grown adult.” And people notice.

Web Design 101: Don’t take control of the user’s browser. They’re driving. You’re a passenger. Sit down.

Reason #1: You’re breaking accessibility (and probably the law)

This is the big one, so I’m putting it first.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have a specific rule about this called Success Criterion 3.2.5: Change on Request. In plain English: opening a new tab or window counts as a “change of context,” and you’re not supposed to do it unless the user actually asked for it.

Technically, 3.2.5 is a Level AAA criterion, which is the strictest tier. But here’s the catch — accessibility auditors flag forced new tabs at the AA level too, because the related advisory technique (G200) basically says “yeah, don’t do this, it disorients people.”

If your business is subject to ADA web compliance — and if you have customers in the U.S., it probably is — this matters. Forced new tabs are one of the easiest things for an auditor to spot, and one of the easiest things for a plaintiff’s attorney to screenshot.

But forget the legal stuff for a second. Let me show you the actual humans this affects.

Meet three people your website is annoying right now

Jenny is blind and uses a screen reader called NVDA. She navigates almost entirely by keyboard shortcuts — she doesn’t see her browser tabs the way you do. When a link suddenly opens in a new tab without warning, her screen reader doesn’t always announce it. She thinks she’s still on the same page. She hits the back button. Nothing happens. Now she’s confused and frustrated, and she’s on your website.

Marcus is on his phone. (Spoiler: most of your visitors are on their phones.) Mobile browsers handle tabs weirdly. On some phones, a new tab buries itself behind a tiny number badge that nobody notices. Marcus thinks the link did nothing. He taps it again. Still nothing. He gives up and Googles your competitor.

Bob has a tremor in his hands and navigates by keyboard because a mouse is too imprecise. He’s built up a rhythm: click a link, read, hit Backspace to go back, move on. Your forced new tab breaks his rhythm completely. Now he has to figure out where the new tab went, switch to it, read, and somehow get back. For Bob, every “small” inconvenience is a real obstacle.

None of these people are edge cases. They’re a meaningful slice of your customer base, and you’re making their visit harder for no good reason.

Reason #2: You’re breaking the back button

The back button is the most-used button on the entire internet. People use it instinctively. They don’t think about it. It’s muscle memory.

When you force a new tab, the back button on that new tab does nothing. It’s grayed out. It’s a dead end. The user has to figure out how to get back to your site through some other means — closing the tab, switching tabs, hunting through their history. That’s friction. Friction makes people leave.

Reason #3: You’re being inconsistent

Some of your links open in the same tab. Some open in a new one. From the user’s perspective, there’s no logic to it. They click, and they don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe they get a new tab. Maybe they don’t. Maybe their place is saved. Maybe it isn’t.

Inconsistency is the enemy of trust. Your website should behave predictably. Every link should do roughly the same thing unless there’s a really good reason otherwise.

Reason #4: You’re being rude

I don’t know how else to say it. Forcing a new tab is the digital equivalent of someone grabbing your steering wheel because they don’t trust your driving. Some users like new tabs. Some prefer same-tab navigation. Some keep everything in one window. They have systems. They have preferences. They have it figured out.

And then you come along and override all of it because you’re worried about bounce rate.

Reason #5: The research changed, and you missed the memo

For years, designers debated this one. Some folks pointed at giants like Amazon and said “well, they open new tabs, so it must be fine.” That argument doesn’t hold up anymore.

The Nielsen Norman Group — basically the people who write the rulebook on usability — now says links should open in the same tab by default. If you think a new tab will genuinely help users, you need real evidence from usability testing, not a hunch about bounce rates.

The current consensus from both the accessibility world and the UX research world is the same: same tab by default. New tab only when you have a real reason.

“But what if I really, really need a new tab?”

Fine. There are legitimate exceptions. A few examples:

• A user is filling out a long form and clicks a “help” link. You don’t want them to lose their form data.
• You’re embedding a video or PDF that the user is in the middle of watching or reading.
• The user is in the middle of a multi-step process — checkout, application, booking — where leaving the page would lose progress.

In those cases, a new tab can actually help. But — and this is the important part — you need to tell the user it’s going to happen.

If you must, do it right

WCAG actually gives you a way to make forced new tabs compliant: warn the user in advance. Visually and for screen readers. Here’s the basic pattern:

<a href="https://example.com"
   target="_blank"
   rel="noopener noreferrer">
  External Resource
  <span class="sr-only">(opens in new tab)</span>
  <svg aria-hidden="true" ...>...</svg>
</a>

Three pieces are doing work here:

1. The visible icon (that little arrow-out-of-a-box thing) tells sighted users the link will open elsewhere.
2. The screen-reader-only text (“opens in new tab”) announces the same warning to people using assistive technology. The sr-only class hides it visually but keeps it readable for screen readers.
3. The rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute is a security best practice. Without it, the new tab can mess with the tab it came from in some sneaky ways. Modern browsers have started adding this protection automatically, but you should still include it because not every browser is modern.

If you want the full how-to with copy-paste code samples, the W3C has a detailed guide called G201: Giving users advanced warning when opening a new window (opens in new tab) that walks through it step by step.

Yes, I just used a new-tab link in an article about not using new-tab links. The W3C link goes to a different domain entirely, and I warned you. That’s the rule. I’m following it.

The bottom line

Forcing new tabs doesn’t keep visitors on your site. It just makes the visitors you already have a little angrier. Some of them — the ones using screen readers, mobile browsers, or keyboard navigation — get more than a little angry. They leave entirely.

Default to same-tab links. Trust your visitors to navigate. If they leave, they’ll come back if your site is worth coming back to. And if it isn’t, no amount of target="_blank" is going to save you.

Stop hijacking the browser. Your customers will thank you. (Or, more likely, they’ll just stop quietly hating you. Which is the next best thing.)