Small Business Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 499 small business schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 423 small business 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 97% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 63.3% of the 499 small business schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 17% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Yellow (6%), blue (5.6%) and green (3.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on small business school websites.

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: white 11% and grey 1.7%

Font

The largest number, nearly 46.7%, of small business school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on small business school websites include Verdana (22.4%) and Helvetica (8%).

The largest small business school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Miami Dade College: Arial
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 283 small business schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 168 YouTube channel subscribers. The small business schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 2,942 subscribers
3. University of Pennsylvania: 2,012 subscribers

Exactly 331 small business schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,465 Twitter account followers. The small business schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
2. University of Miami: 15,911 followers
3. Saint Leo University: 14,978 followers

Web Metrics

Although all small business schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80% of small business school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The small business 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. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links

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

1. California Lutheran University: 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 small business school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
2. Lake - Sumter Community College: 62 HTML validation errors; 864 CSS validation errors
3. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors