Fashion Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 227 fashion schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 167 fashion 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 59.9% of the 227 fashion schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 17.2% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (7%), blue (6.2%) and yellow (4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on fashion school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest fashion 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. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%

Font

The largest number, nearly 52%, of fashion school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on fashion school websites include Verdana (19.4%) and Tahoma (6.2%).

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

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 106 fashion schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 210 YouTube channel subscribers. The fashion schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. The New School: 2,231 subscribers
2. The Art Institute of Atlanta: 1,885 subscribers
3. University of Arizona: 1,805 subscribers

Exactly 141 fashion schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,928 Twitter account followers. The fashion 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 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% of fashion school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The fashion 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 school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The fashion 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. Miami Dade College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Gwinnett Technical College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The fashion 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. Alexandria Technical & Community College: 14 HTML validation errors; 516 CSS validation errors
3. Milwaukee Area Technical College: 519 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors