Another full week of episodes, three sites with completely different strategies. The first, Claremont had great intentions but when it came to executing it didn’t pan out so well. The homepage was overtaken by large graphical tabs with news and events in mixed columns. Last but not least cutting off their news titles won’t help users decide if the article looks interesting. Their site review got picked up by their online newsletter, CKC was great about responding to my comments and are on their way to solving existing issues.

Tasmanian Academy took a non-traditional route to their design and didn’t stray a single shade from their blue and yellow colors. Although the site was visually appealing and had a unique personality when it came to getting information they didn’t fair so well. Their final score was not so bad but with a few tweaks here and there could really help their prospective students.

Last but not least, with the highest score this week, Duke University. They launched their redesign this month and boy was it a change. They added an incredible amount of life and interactivity to their homepage and child pages. Their program information was still a little scattered but they are definitely moving in the right direction. I cannot wait to see what they have in store for the next few iterations.

This Week’s Reviews

Keep up up with @educheckup on twitter and RSS for more site updated in the coming weeks. Or if you prefer, an iTunes feed is available so you can get new episodes automatically.

Last weekend marked the first birthday for EDU Checkup! With this exciting milestone comes a few goodies. The most important is a regular schedule and the return of the weekly wrap up on eduStyle. The others will be coming shortly.

This week I reviewed three sites, Colorado State University, Fairfield University and Grove City College. Great stuff going on with all three especially in the area of design. My favorite was Colorado State, it was the most contemporary and spacing was very well defined.

The use of photography really set the tone and identity for these schools, the weakest use of photography went to Groove City. Not because their photos were bad, it was more about of the location of the photos, they did not have high prominence compared to the other.

I hope you enjoyed the reviews this week and stay tuned next week while I continue on the regularly scheduled episodes.

This Week’s Reviews

Keep up up with @educheckup on twitter and RSS for more site updated in the coming weeks. Or if you prefer, an iTunes feed is available so you can get new episodes automatically.