Quantitative Analysis of Website Visual Design

[[abstract]]A website not only spreads the message, but also narrows the distance between a visitor and the site owner. Web design and layout affects the readability and usability of a website. Good visual design gives the visitor a deep impression and increases the visit rate and page views. However, most non-professional designers lack the expertise and experience of visual design. Many books or articles propose the site design guidelines, but there are sometimes ambiguity and inconsistency in the guidelines, so that they may be not easily followed by a non-professional designer. This study does not attempt to propose new subjective visual design guidelines for the sites. Instead, we collect the relevant guidelines proposed by experts, and then determine the visual features which can be quantified. Next, we select a set of excellent award-winning websites and a set of general websites, and then calculate the feature values of their pages. Finally the objective design rules can be obtained through the quantitative analysis of these feature values. A non-professional designer can produce better visual quality of the site by following these rules