Design Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,483 design schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,119 design 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 95% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 65.7% of the 1,483 design schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (6%), blue (5.2%) and yellow (4.5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on design school websites.

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: white 56% and blue 1.1%
3. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42.8%, of design school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on design school websites include Verdana (27.2%) and Helvetica (6.4%).

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: Times New Roman
3. Arizona State University: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 725 design schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 201 YouTube channel subscribers. The design schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers

Exactly 884 design schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,420 Twitter account followers. The design schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all design 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% of design school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The design schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
2. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
3. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on design school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The design 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. Gavilan College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Spoon River College: 68 HTML validation errors; 871 CSS validation errors