Webpage Aesthetics: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Abstract

Webpages vary drastically in their look and feel: the presence of images is a major discriminating factor. Some webpages contain mainly text; others exploit flashy ads and a variety of eye-catching pictures. In this paper, we investigate the impact of graphics on webpage aesthetics perception and computation. We split webpages in three categories -- small, moderate and high amount of graphics -- and analyzed how different visual features predicted aesthetics for the different categories. Significant between-category differences were found, e.g., the amount of white space decreased aesthetics for the high-graphic webpages, but not for other webpages; more on-page main colors increased aesthetics for the low-graphic webpages, but decreased for the high-graphic webpages. We suggest future research investigates separately webpages with low and high graphic amount. No single improvement recipe may exist for all webpages; a more fruitful strategy would be suggesting different improvements for different types of webpages.