Just a few things to say about this week’s round of sites. They were overall pretty good, nothing earth shattering but at the same time they didn’t fall flat on their faces. Elon University had a super clean interface and a pretty good amount of information about their programs. They used their homepage as a pure marketing tool and that’s great to see. Too many institutions get bogged down by internal links and messaging being presented to prospective students.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale had the best code quality of the three but I ran into some major user interface and information challenges. Code alone is not going to bring in prospective students, focus on the information then visuals and code should supporting the two along the whole process.

The last site Durham College is actually a site I reviewed on the very first episode of EDU Checkup over a year and a half ago. They have since redesigned completely and the score has risen dramatically!  The visuals were a little shaky at times but the amount of information they supplied for each program was amazing! They were the first I’ve seen that included current student testimonials with each program description. Very impressive.

If you’re interested in having your university (or one of your competitors) reviewed publicly or privately feel free to submit your site. Over half of the sites reviewed on EDU Checkup are by request.

This Week’s Reviews

Site	Visual	Information	Code	Overall
Durham College – Episode #157	89	97	75	(261/300) 87% B
Southern Illinois University Carbondale – Episode #156	79	66	80	(225/300) 75% C
Elon University – Episode #155	95	82	74	(251/300) 83% B

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.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 12:05 pm and is filed under EDU Checkup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.