Automotive Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 904 automotive schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 703 automotive 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 93% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 67.9% of the 904 automotive schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 9.3% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.5%), black (6.2%) and yellow (3.5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on automotive school websites.

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

1. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
2. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%
3. Northern Virginia Community College: white 11% and grey 4.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 39.5%, of automotive school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on automotive school websites include Verdana (25%) and Tahoma (8.8%).

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

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. Northern Virginia Community College: Trebuchet

Social Presence

Exactly 376 automotive schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 45 YouTube channel subscribers. The automotive schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Grand Rapids Community College: 1,166 subscribers
2. New Mexico State University - Grants: 847 subscribers
3. Johnson County Community College: 734 subscribers

Exactly 462 automotive schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 394 Twitter account followers. The automotive schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Boise State University: 4,295 followers
2. Western Washington University: 2,368 followers
3. Fresno City College: 2,297 followers

Web Metrics

Although all automotive schools have websites, only about 34% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 66.7% of automotive school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The automotive schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Minnesota West Community and Technical College: 26,086 broken links
3. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on automotive school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The automotive 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. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Monterey Peninsula College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. Chippewa Valley Technical College: 121 HTML validation errors; 942 CSS validation errors
2. Spoon River College: 68 HTML validation errors; 871 CSS validation errors
3. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors