Nutrition Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 392 nutrition schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 357 nutrition 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 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.8% of the 392 nutrition schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.8% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.9%), yellow (4.1%) and green (3.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on nutrition school websites.

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

1. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: white 56% and blue 1.1%
2. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
3. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42.1%, of nutrition school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on nutrition school websites include Verdana (26%) and Helvetica (6.6%).

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

1. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: Times New Roman
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. Miami Dade College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 264 nutrition schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 253 YouTube channel subscribers. The nutrition schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers
2. Mayo School of Health Sciences: 3,951 subscribers
3. Purdue University - Main Campus: 2,760 subscribers

Exactly 309 nutrition schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,579 Twitter account followers. The nutrition schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
2. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: 18,232 followers

Web Metrics

Although all nutrition schools have websites, only about 19% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 81% of nutrition school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The nutrition schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
3. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links

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

1. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. University of Northern Colorado: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. University of Connecticut: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The nutrition 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. Milwaukee Area Technical College: 519 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Winthrop University: 365 HTML validation errors; 99 CSS validation errors