Tony,
I whish I had access to your website when I applied to get into college. I was really disoriented, especially as an international student. You’re doing a great job, and I think your website will be a worthy competitor to www.collegeconfidential.com. I read some of your articles and I think they offer good insight into the admission process, and all the things to consider prior to applying. I would have some suggestions, although I think you did an amazing job!
Layout:
Your website is like a matrix – you have links to choose on the horizontal and links to choose from on the vertical which could be a little bit confusing. I’ll give you an example: suppose you are looking for information about what to do to get into college. I as a user go on your website and I have no idea what link to click since there is no guidance. It would be clear to the user if you had links only on the vertical. So instead of having the 6 horizontal ones, you could have one more vertical link which you could call – Steps to Follow. The 6 previous horizontal links could be sublinks in the new Steps to Follow.
I would also find useful as a user to find a guide / map on how to use your website, what to look for and where(maybe a help link). A contact page would also be appreciated I guess, since users might have suggestions / critiques.
Finally, as a user I am tempted to click on the pictures, but all of your pictures direct me to the Stanford website, instead of the article’s website instead. It would be great if clicking on the pictures would take to the website, since the pictures are very eye-catching and larger in size in comparison with the text
Content:
I would also put some statistics related to the process of admission. I remember I always looked for them, because I think they represent a starting point, a point of reference. Another topic related to statistics could be a ranking system among users. Users can upload an essay, resume, etc and other users can rank it.
The advertising content could be from the publishers that have SAT books like Barron’s, Kaplan, The Princeton Review etc. I am sure they would be interested in advertising on your website. Schools could also advertise on you website. You could have a special link which would lead you tot a directory of schools where each school could advertise.
