Fashion Design Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 174 fashion design schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 150 fashion 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 68.4% of the 174 fashion design schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 14.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (4.6%), blue (4%) and yellow (3.4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on fashion design school websites.

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

1. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
2. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%

Font

The largest number, nearly 46.6%, of fashion design school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on fashion design school websites include Verdana (20.7%) and Helvetica (7.5%).

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

1. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 99 fashion design schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 299 YouTube channel subscribers. The fashion design schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Purdue University - Main Campus: 2,760 subscribers
2. Oregon State University: 2,420 subscribers
3. The New School: 2,231 subscribers

Exactly 131 fashion design schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,891 Twitter account followers. The fashion design schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: 18,232 followers
3. University of Wisconsin - Madison: 16,729 followers

Web Metrics

Although all fashion design schools have websites, only about 23% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 77% of fashion design school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The fashion design schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
2. Fisher College: 2,795 broken links
3. FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising - Los Angeles: 1,853 broken links

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

1. Monterey Peninsula College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Florida State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Montclair State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. Moore College of Art and Design: 2 HTML validation errors; 566 CSS validation errors
2. University of Nebraska - Lincoln: 0 HTML validation errors; 420 CSS validation errors
3. Long Beach City College: 30 HTML validation errors; 270 CSS validation errors