Beauty Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,344 beauty schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 671 beauty 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 57.9% of the 1,344 beauty schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 18% use black as the primary color on their websites. Grey (9.4%), blue (5.4%) and yellow (4.1%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on beauty school websites.

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

1. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%
2. Lone Star College System: black 81.8% and grey 0.8%
3. Salt Lake Community College: yellow 6% and orange 1.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 41.1%, of beauty school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on beauty school websites include Verdana (23.9%) and Tahoma (8.3%).

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

1. Houston Community College: Arial
2. Lone Star College System: Arial
3. Salt Lake Community College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 242 beauty schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 91 YouTube channel subscribers. The beauty schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Make-up Designory: 13,358 subscribers
2. Johnson County Community College: 734 subscribers
3. Cao Institute of Aesthetics: 598 subscribers

Exactly 348 beauty schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 273 Twitter account followers. The beauty schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Make-up Designory: 4,444 followers
2. Toni & Guy Hairdressing Academy - Coeur D Alene: 2,323 followers
3. Southwest Institute of Healing Arts: 2,044 followers

Web Metrics

Although all beauty schools have websites, only about 57% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 43.9% of beauty school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The beauty schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Minnesota West Community and Technical College: 26,086 broken links
2. Independence Community College: 6,000 broken links
3. Vincennes University: 3,603 broken links

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

1. Arthur's Beauty College Inc - Fort Smith: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Arthur's Beauty College Inc: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The beauty 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. Ridgewater College: 0 HTML validation errors; 846 CSS validation errors
3. Chisholm Trail Technology Center: 117 HTML validation errors; 494 CSS validation errors