svcseattle.com Competitive Review

Features/Content
Concept
None
Turn of century circus
None
Beach life
Choose the right life: Option A/B
Look and Feel
Very plain, low tech, professional--but unexciting
Bright colors, huge graphics
Hip, artsy
Very inconsistent from page to page
Gritty, hip, tons of info
Theme/Tag Line
None
None
Passion + Creativity + Life = Portfolio Center
"Where do you want to go to ad school?"
None, other than "Option A/B"
Communication Style
Simplistic, "we'll make this easy for you"
Hip, irreverent, casual
Intelligent, high-brow, artsy-fartsy
Very straightforward, long-ish copy. Not much of a fit with the beach life look
Smart, casual, self-effacing
Apparent Position
None is apparent. You could say "mainstream" or "lots of choices"
None is apparent. Although you can tell that the school is informal and focused on advertising
None is obvious. We could say "the more serious portfolio school"
None is deliberately stated, but you could conclude this is the "live in cool places while you learn about advertising" school
We help you get a better job--or fulfull your life dream of the right job
Navigation
Std hierarchical
Flash buttons, poor
Flash, confusing
Std hierarchical
Std hierarchical
Class Descriptions
Titles only
Yes, detailed
No
Yes
Yes
Program Descriptions
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Current Schedule
No
No
No
No
Yes
Annual Tuition
$34,000
$26,400
$26,000
None given
By the class
Success Stories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Student Handbook
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
FAQ
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Student Portfolios
Limited
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instructor Biogs
Limited
Name only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Intructor Portfolios
No
No
No
No
Yes
On-line Enrollment
Yes
No
No
No
Coming
Bulletin Board
No
No
No
No
Yes
Student/Faculty Area
No
No
No
No
Yes
Bandwidth
Low, HTML
High, Flash
High, Flash
Low, HTML
High, HTML
Comments
Boring, straight ahead, not a very creative impression
Site uses pdf files for many pages. Slow and cumbersome
Navigation very difficult to use, unclear, slow. Class descriptions very slow to load and scroll
Totally haphazard look from page to page. Missing seemingly obvious information.
Concept of daring to make the right life decision needs to be brought out more front and center