Fashion Merchandising Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 135 fashion merchandising schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 106 fashion merchandising 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 65.2% of the 135 fashion merchandising schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.7%), black (5.9%) and yellow (4.4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on fashion merchandising school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest fashion merchandising 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. Tarrant County College District: white 18% and yellow 4%

Font

The largest number, nearly 48.1%, of fashion merchandising school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on fashion merchandising school websites include Verdana (21.5%) and Tahoma (7.4%).

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

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. Tarrant County College District: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 70 fashion merchandising schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 174 YouTube channel subscribers. The fashion merchandising schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. The New School: 2,231 subscribers
2. University of Arizona: 1,805 subscribers
3. Grand Rapids Community College: 1,166 subscribers

Exactly 91 fashion merchandising schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,978 Twitter account followers. The fashion merchandising schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. University of Arizona: 14,866 followers
2. Texas Tech University: 14,268 followers
3. Texas Christian University: 13,107 followers

Web Metrics

Although all fashion merchandising schools have websites, only about 26% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 74.8% of fashion merchandising school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The fashion merchandising schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
2. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
3. Vincennes University: 3,603 broken links

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

1. Miami Dade College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Brenau University: 1 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Eastern Michigan University: 0 HTML validation errors; 1 CSS validation errors

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

1. Alexandria Technical & Community College: 14 HTML validation errors; 516 CSS validation errors
2. Ashland University: 222 HTML validation errors; 128 CSS validation errors
3. FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising - Los Angeles: 169 HTML validation errors; 114 CSS validation errors