Against a background of huge increases in tuition fees and a consequential drop in university applications, competition for the best students is hotting up.

And a crucial part of attracting them, given that most students today can't remember a world without the internet, is the university's own website.

So you'd think a lot more effort would be put in by universities and colleges into making their websites a good experience for users - but not according to the latest research from Sitemorse. Our Q2 universities benchmark of nearly 300 FE websites shows most of them - with some honourable exceptions - are still full of errors and not accessible for the disabled.

The Times Higher Educational Supplement recently published a poll of 150,000 international students that found only four per cent of students used social media to select a university and only six per cent were persuaded by staff at university fairs. No less than 45 per cent of students said recommendations by friends were the most important factor and 41 per cent cited the institution's website.

Our benchmark of almost 300 websites of universities and colleges has now been published. The results may surprise you. Check out the summary or full results data on the Sitemorse website.