Websites Benchmark Report
Top Higher Education Websites in the Netherlands 2023
“Equal opportunities for everyone” is the foundation of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. So to what extent are higher educational institutions on top of website accessibility, regardless of any invisible disabilities that students may have?
Acquia has analyzed the primary websites of the Top 40 Dutch Universities to see how their websites perform, and if they are accessible and fully-optimized for modern web standards.
Top 5 Websites Overall
We are thrilled to announce the top performers in Digital Accessibility, Content Quality Assurance, Response Time, Performance, and SEO.
The Overall category showcases the top-performing websites of Higher Education in the Netherlands in terms of SEO, response time, performance, and web accessibility. These websites received high overall rankings in 2023. Congratulations, and keep up the good work!
Overall Ranking | University Name |
|---|---|
1st | Hogeschool Inholland |
2nd | Amsterdam VUMC |
3rd | Hogeschool Saxion |
4th | Universiteit Twente |
5th | Maastricht University |
Top 5 Websites for Web Accessibility
More than 2 million people have a disability in the Netherlands. For many of those, Digital Accessibility matters. Accessible websites enable anyone, regardless of their age, level of digital competency, or disabilities, to use your website and access its content.
Acquia Optimize scans your website to look for potential problems preventing web accessibility. The recommendations for fixing these problems are provided in the following step, which also gives you an overview of how well your website is performing.
We advise achieving an accessibility compliance score of at least 70% for organisations using the Acquia Optimize platform in order to demonstrate progress towards compliance. The average score for Higher Education websites in the Netherlands was 71.25%.
These 5 Top Universities in the Netherlands scored highest for Digital Accessibility in 2023.
Ranking | University Name | Accessibility Compliance* |
|---|---|---|
1st | Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht | 77.92% |
2nd | Hogeschool Inholland | 76.92% |
3rd | NHL Stenden hogeschool | 76.67% |
4th | Hogeschool van Amsterdam | 75.22% |
5th | De Haagse Hogeschool | 75.18% |
Top 5 Websites for Content Quality Assurance
The Content Quality Assurance module looks for misspellings, broken links, broken images, and readability issues. By taking on Quality Assurance, you can decrease bounce rates, increase conversions, and improve your SEO, helping (future) students more easily find the information they need about their University or education program.
The websites of Universities in the Netherlands received a 70.57 average rating. The Universities listed below deserve special praise for raising the bar for Content Quality Assurance.
Ranking | University Name | Content Quality Assurance* |
|---|---|---|
1st | Rijksuniversiteit Groningen | 99.60% |
2nd | De Hanzehogeschool Groningen | 99.20% |
3rd | NHL Stenden hogeschool | 99% |
4th | Universiteit Twente | 95.8% |
5th | Hogeschool Utrecht | 95.6% |
Top 5 Websites for SEO
On-page SEO still plays a significant role in search engine rankings. Common errors like missing H1 tags, broken links and too many internal links on a page can harm your rankings and visitor experience.
The average SEO score for the websites of the Netherlands' higher education websites was 83.41 We applaud the following universities for being leaders in the SEO category.
Ranking | University Name | SEO Compliance* |
|---|---|---|
1st | UMC Groningen | 97.06% |
2nd | NHL Stenden hogeschool | 93.59% |
3rd | Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen | 93.07% |
| 4th | Tilburg University | 92.54% |
| 5th | Fontys Hogeschool | 89.93% |
Top 5 Websites for Response Time
In addition to improving user experience, having a quick-loading website is important for SEO because Google uses it as a ranking factor. With Acquia Optimize's Heartbeat module, you can keep an eye on how well your website is performing to guarantee a positive user experience for your visitors and prevent any potential member annoyance.
The higher education websites in the Netherlands had an average response time of 373.45 ms. Your score must be under 200 ms in order for you to be considered an excellent performer. The top five high education institutions in the Netherlands should be pleased with their exceptional response time results.
Ranking | University Name | Average Response Time* |
|---|---|---|
1st | Universiteit Utrecht | 52 ms |
2nd | Universiteit Twente | 61 ms |
3rd | Breda University of Applied Sciences | 70 ms |
4th | Tilburg University | 70 ms |
5th | Fontys Hogeschool | 73 ms |
Top 5 Websites for Performance Score
Getting a pulse check on the overall website performance score (0–100) based on Google Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals provides a comprehensive view of how visitor location, network speed, and device affect your site's performance.
The average performance rating for this benchmark report was 48.10. We recommend that you aim for a score between 90 and 100. Below is a list of the top five higher education websites in the Netherlands based on this report.
Ranking | University Name | Performance score (0-100) |
|---|---|---|
1st | Wageningen University & Research | 84 |
2nd | Amsterdam VUMC | 83 |
3rd | Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht | 82 |
4th | Avans Hogeschool | 73 |
5th | Universiteit Utrecht | 70 |