We know our competition often charges well into 5 figures to do what we do in our evaluations. What we have that they don't is 13 years of experience with higher education websites. Yes, we can remember when Netscape 3.0 introduced colored cell backgrounds in tables. One of the many milestones we've seen in website development over the years.

We compare your website with 5 of your market overlap group that you designate. This evaluation is the most expensive one [$5,000] we do because it takes us about 80 hours of research and compilation to put it together. We gather hundreds of screen-captures to DEMONSTRATE the differences and often the follies of your competition.

After you read our report, which often reaches past 300 pages, you will have a very good idea of how your website stacks up against your direct competition's websites, mainly because we show you with pictures. All of our evaluations end with an executive summary and recommendations. And happily, most all of our recommendations don't require a committee's approval to fix, they are often times little things that can be easily corrected.

Here is where our long-heralded experience comes to the fore. Since we've cruised hundreds of college websites and have been directly involved with hundreds, we know what is going on out there in College Website Land.

There are several key pieces of content that ALL college websites should have and most don't even have half of those.

Another aspect is the quality of the text copy. Is there a detectable "voice" to the text copy and that voice is aimed for whom? Parents? Fellow boomer geezer staffers? Or high school adolescents? Or none of the above. Let us show off our English and Journalism degrees for your benefit.

A content evaluation typically involves screen captures again [all of our evalations are filled with screen captures] with "arrowed boxes" pointing out some of the areas of note. An executive summary and recommendations page is included. This is one of our least expensive evalations at $500.

The current trend today is to mount some sort of FLASH feature at the top of the homepage, that is kinetic in some way to gather attention [supposedly] and lend an element of tangibility by showing off some fine campus photos or students in action.

Our Multi-Media Deployment evaluation looks at all of your multi-media on your current website that we can easily find [and users can easily find] and deconstruct how effective these may be. Our graduate school background in semiotics enhances our point of view for this evaluation.

Our evaluation screen captures your mult-media in various phases along with any information we can gather about it's usability in terms of browser/platform compatibility, download times, and plug-in version problems, if any. Like all of our evaluations, it comes with an executive summary and recommendations page. This is one of our least expensive evalutions at $500.

What many websites are discovering is that it's okay to link some essential content in multiple places and include it in multiple hierarchies. What is logical to one person's thinking is chaos to another's.

We use the contemporary term "organic" because it denotes something positive and less dangerous in today's world. When it comes to mapping out content, the term "organic" signifies possible pathways for growth. Most menu systems on websites are designed for today's content, not tomorrow's.

We try and show ways how your navigation can include tomorrow's content along with improving the accessibility of today's. There is no magic here, just some common sense.

This evaluation takes a bit more time than others and therefore costs more at $1,000. It includes an executive summary and recommendation page like all of our other evaluations.

There are many techniques in common use today that make it easier for more users to complete an online form correctly. Unfortunately, we have found that there are always some users who don't bother to read directions, bolded directions, flashing, blinking directions and there is nothing in the technology bin to capture those.

We fill out and submit your online form and document every step along the way, deconstructing every field set in the form and documenting the follow up. Often times for clients, this is the first time anyone has ever done this in such a documented way with screen captures and like all of our other evaluations, provides a historical record of what the form was like when we filled it out, useful for evaluations and upgrading in the future.

This evaluation is one of our least expensive at $500 and includes an executive summary with a recommendation page.

We often call the SEO experts the "emperor's tailors" since they typically try and couch their expertise in undecipherable nomenclature and jargon, making the client feel like of course, they MUST know what they're talking about.

Here's the secret: content drives search engine optimization. Yes, it really is that simple, but the astonishing part is that most clients don't have much in the way of content. And if they do, they don't integrate it very well for search engines. And yes, there are a few programs today [XML sitemap] that can greatly enhance your website's rankings.

If you want a detailed explanation on how this applies to your website, with screen captures, executive summary and a recommendation page, please forward us $750.

We've sent out over 5 million emails ourselves in the past 7 years, so we have a more than tangential experience with this medium. If you're like everyone else, you've noticed that there has been somewhat of a drop-off in response to emarketing campaigns. This is because email is no longer one of the top mediums prospects use to communicate in their daily lives.

As a result, many colleges are now realizing that niche groups are the ones to reach with email. Groups like choir people, theater people, business career people, etc. The campaigns are getting smaller, more focused, and less frequent.

If this is news to you, then please contact us for an evaluation of your email campaigns and how you should likely spend less time and resources to actually yield greater results. Our emarketing campaign evaluation includes information about pitfalls with some email programs, email formatting, screen captures, executive summary and recommendation page for $750.

Most colleges have never had an outsider like us, cruise their website for the basics. As a parent of a high school senior, I have an added incentive to find what I want to find on college websites and am continuously astonished at how difficult it is and it doesn't need to be that way.

Our usability reviews look into readability, navigation, browser/platform neutrality, any obvious entropy issues, cul de sac-ing. The usual stuff, expertly documented with screen captures, an executive summary and recommendation page for $750.

We didn't make up this term, but we think it best describes the single most important aspect of any website: do you get any sense of what the website is all about by visiting it. When it comes to college websites, does the user get a sense of what it's like to attend that college by visiting the website.

Astonishingly, the answer is almost always a loud Ted Stevens "NO!" for most college websites. The most basic forms of tangibility are words [stories] and pictures. Even today, most college websites don't post much in the way of large, clear photos or "stories" about the college. Some post campus news with teasers on the homepage, but few have any great stories like the famous "panty raid of 1959" in Hillcrest women's dorm.

Some college websites post student profiles [tangible content] while very few post faculty profiles and if they do post them, they are buried deep inside the website. The faculty should be one of the central attractions of any college campus but few college websites acknowledge faculty in any way.

You can get more of my stump-talk with a tangibility review that includes screen captures, executive summary and a recommendation page for $750.