Animation Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 308 animation schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 204 animation schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 94% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 73.4% of the 308 animation schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (5.8%), yellow (2.9%) and blue (2.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on animation school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest animation schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%
2. New York University: white 46% and purple 2.7%
3. College of Southern Nevada: white 47% and blue 6.2%

Font

The largest number, nearly 40.3%, of animation school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on animation school websites include Verdana (30.2%) and Helvetica (5.8%).

The largest animation school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Houston Community College: Arial
2. New York University: Verdana
3. College of Southern Nevada: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 133 animation schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 256 YouTube channel subscribers. The animation schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
2. Full Sail University: 2,427 subscribers
3. Savannah College of Art and Design: 1,503 subscribers

Exactly 159 animation schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,083 Twitter account followers. The animation schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Full Sail University: 10,108 followers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 9,147 followers
3. Savannah College of Art and Design: 7,191 followers

Web Metrics

Although all animation schools have websites, only about 21% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 79.5% of animation school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The animation schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Minnesota School of Business - Richfield: 1,642 broken links
2. Northland Community and Technical College: 908 broken links
3. Lansing Community College: 796 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on animation school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The animation school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Berkeley City College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The animation school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors
2. Chisholm Trail Technology Center: 117 HTML validation errors; 494 CSS validation errors
3. Milwaukee Area Technical College: 519 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors