Welcome

At Best Education Sites, we believe that many of our colleges and universities are failing their students in one crucial way - by not providing them with a rich and easy learning experience on their educational sites. As the world of web design progresses at a dizzying pace, education websites seem to be lost in the past, unable or unwilling to keep up. Anyone who has visited edu sites has probably had the experience: clunky user interface, incomprehensible navigation, ugly design, and no content of any real use for students. We are well aware of this situation, and that is why we decided to create this project of ranking the best educational websites: to try to help fix it.

Our 2011 report on the state of the academic web space, in particular educational websites for students, was compiled by our team of over 2,000 web specialists for the single purpose of assessing where we stand, as a nation of colleges and universities, right now. Rating each school’s educational website in terms of design, content, and usability, our experts have sought to create a full and thorough picture of what each educational site has to offer, and what it lacks. We‘ve also looked at schools’ use (or misuse) of social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Although we believe that, by and large, schools, through their learning websites, are inadequately supplying their students with a web experience of quality, we also want to acknowledge those that have done a stellar job at creating some of the best educational sites for students. This is how we give the best sites their proper due.

BestEdSites is intended for anyone who has ever become frustrated by the education website of a college or university, and for everyone who thinks that our schools can - and should - do better. Best Education Sites is also for anyone interested in web design and higher education, and how the two seemingly disparate fields of interest interact in profoundly important ways. Most of all, Best Education Sites is for students. Today’s college students are engaged with an online world in a way that no other generation ever has before. Our schools must step up to the challenge of meeting them there by providing them with the best education websites possible. And we will try to help them do just that.

Click here for a list of educational websites and educational links including the best educational websites for kids, the top educational websites for teachers, the top language arts educational sites for kids and the best websites for students regarding math and science.

making a good website is hard

If you represent a college or university, we would love to help you with yours. Contact us today for free professional guidance from our experts

Advertising Disclosure

Our website includes information regarding degrees, programs, and other offerings at various client schools and institutions from which we may receive compensation. These schools will be labeled "Sponsored," "Featured," or something similar. This information typically comes directly from the schools and is not independently verified before publication on our website. It is the duty of the associated institution to ensure that the information they provide is accurate and up to date.

Furthermore, we do not guarantee that any of the school listings on our website (including those listed by specific information like program, location, etc.) are exhaustive.

Meet our lead experts

Representing four fields central to the project of educational web design, our experts lead the teams of analysts that grade each site. A rich web experience requires that three elements - design, content, and usability - exist in a perfect synergy on the page. Our experts are the ones who have the final word on whether or not any given school’s website has achieved this.

Color Usage

Westfield State University

577 Western Ave
Westfield, Massachusetts
(413) 572-5300
http://www.wsc.ma.edu/

Site Statistics

Click on the circles below to see how our experts rated each category. Click the 'User' circle to submit your own rating.

6.6Overall Score
9Design
1.7Content
9Usability
0User

Design Grade

Jonathan S.

Web Development Expert

0.7

Chris K.

Ui Expert

8.75

1.4

8.75

Katrina M.

Design Expert

8.5

2.4

8.5

Alli O.

Admissions Advisor Expert

9.5

2.2

9.75

User Ratings

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Visuals

Colors

white 8.4ffffff
white 7.7fefefe
grey 3.3262d37

Fonts

Sans
Lucida
Lucida Sans Unicode
Lucida Grande
Sans serif
Georgia
Times New Roman
Times
Serif
Helvetica
Arial

Web Metrics

Google

Google Page Rank

Google index pages

2,740

SEOMoz

SEOMoz page rank

5.3

Seomoz page links

1,126

Seomoz page authority

56.0

Compete

Compete page rank

Other Metrics

title

Westfield State University (26 characters)

meta desciption

(0 characters)

meta keywords

(0 characters)

W3C Validation

Failed HTML validation: 1 Errors / 1 Warnings
Failed CSS validation: 2 Errors

Download Times

14.4K - 2 minutes and 18.0 seconds
28.8K - 1 minute and 9.0 seconds
33.6K - 58.8 seconds
56K - 35.4 seconds
ISDN 128K - 15.6 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps - 1.2 seconds

Jonathan S.

Chris K.

Katrina M.

Alli O.

rate this site

Colors

Fonts

Google

Google Page Rank

Google index pages

SEOMoz

SEOMoz page rank

Seomoz page links

Seomoz page authority

Compete

Compete page rank

Other Metrics

title

meta desciption

meta keywords

W3C Validation

Download Times

Broken Links/404s

Facebook

total fans

update frequency (per week)

shared/liked on facebook

Twitter

total fans

tweet frequency (per week)

shared/liked on twitter

Delicious

Bookmarks

Tags

Youtube

total videos uploaded

Subscribers

Programs Offered

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