  The Arabic websites constitute 1% of the web content with more than 225
million viewers and 41% Internet penetration. However, there is a lack of
design guidelines related to the selection and use of appropriate font type and
size and images in Arabic websites. Both text and images are vital multimedia
components of websites and thereby were selected for investigation in this
study. The herein paper performed an indepth inspection of font and image
design practices within 73 most visited Arabic websites in Saudi Arabia
according to Alexa Internet ranking in the first quarter of 2019. Our
exhaustive analysis showed discrepancies between the international design
recommendations and the actual design of Arabic websites. There was a
considerable variation and inconsistency in using font types and sizes between
and within the Arabic websites. Arabic Droid Kufi was used mostly for styling
page titles and navigation menus, whilst Tahoma was used for styling
paragraphs. The font size of the Arabic text ranged from 12 to 16 pixels, which
may lead to poor readability. Images were used heavily in the Arabic websites
causing prolonged site loading times. Moreover, the images strongly reflected
the dimensions of the Saudi culture, especially collectivism and masculinity.
Current Arabic web design practices are compared against the findings from past
studies about international designs and lessons aiming at ameliorating the
Arabic web design are inferred.
