The law on university self-government introduced in Italy three years ago has created fierce competition among Italian universities. In this situation, communication is rapidly increasing in importance, and the ability to attract students also depends on the quality of the information. In this paper we discuss the quality of the web sites in five different universities of North Italy. Our analysis is based on 2QCV2Q, a general model for web site design and evaluation used to single out elements which, when suitably combined, permit evaluation of the quality of a web site and make suggestions for its improvement.