Photography Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 328 photography schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 283 photography 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 65.2% of the 328 photography schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 14.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (8.2%), yellow (4%) and blue (3.4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on photography school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest photography 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 Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 47%, of photography school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on photography school websites include Verdana (18.9%) and Tahoma (6.4%).

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

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 192 photography schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 144 YouTube channel subscribers. The photography schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. University of Oregon: 2,253 subscribers
2. The New School: 2,231 subscribers
3. The Art Institute of Atlanta: 1,885 subscribers

Exactly 231 photography schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,565 Twitter account followers. The photography schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Miami Ad School - Miami Beach: 23,734 followers
2. University of Miami: 15,911 followers
3. Ohio University - Main Campus: 14,704 followers

Web Metrics

Although all photography schools have websites, only about 24% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 76.1% of photography school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The photography schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links
2. University of Central Missouri: 1,421 broken links
3. Western Kentucky University: 1,274 broken links

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

1. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Monterey Peninsula College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Miami Dade College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors
2. Irvine Valley College: 0 HTML validation errors; 854 CSS validation errors
3. Ridgewater College: 0 HTML validation errors; 846 CSS validation errors