Capturing the needs of amateur web designers by means of examples

Many sites are created by people who lack professional training in web design. We present ‘SiteGuide’, a tool that helps amateur web designers to decide which information will be included in a new web site and how the information will be organized. SiteGuide takes as input URLs of web sites from the same domain as the site the user wants to create. It automatically searches the pages of these example sites for common topics and common structural features. On the basis of these commonalities it creates a model of the user’s needs. The model can serve as a starting point for the new web site. Also, it can be used to check whether important elements are missing in a concept version of the new site and, if necessary, to adapt the initial design.