Website Evaluation& Comparison : Nate Berkus and Dorothy Draper

In this post I will be comparing the websites of Nate Berkus and Dorothy Draper. I will be looking at the design, layout, colour palette, typography and also technical aspects such as navigation, ease of use, presentation of galleries and how easy it is to use and understand the artist.

Nate Berkus

I will start looking at Nate Berkus and his website. The website is clean and not boring with lots of information and writings. Under the full photo of an interior image there is a sentence which told by Nate Berkus. It is like his signature sentence and it look quite good in the website's home page. And there is an information about Nate Berkus's business story on the left the another picture. Also there is a link to learn more about that. Under the home page there is more personal information about Nate and some photos of him. Some pages like home collections , shop and the latest are also in the home page. So it has a long home page with them. The header is easy to use and have clear navigation bar that includes different information about Nate Berkus and his works. There is also search button to find specific piece of work or information about him. In the footer there is his social links and his copyright is up to date (2025). In the footer there is a navigation bar which  includes same with the header.

The next page I clicked into was 'design firm' page. This page includes an information about his partnership , projects and his offices. This page also includes a 'contact us' page. They separated the contact us for different inquiries this actually really helpful to get quick and correct respond from them. It is hard to find the contact details from header but there is a separate 'contact us'  button under the connect in the footer. 

The next page I clicked on is 'interiors' page. In this page there are works which Nate did in different areas. There are interiors of houses, shops and residences. When you click the design you will see more information about design such as where this project built, description of design and how many square foot is this building... And there are many photos of the interior of the building.

Then  I clicked on 'home collections' page. In this page there are some collections which he used in his designs. Some of them are his own designs and when you click on the collections you can find the objects and furniture and buy them.

In 'shop' page we can see the all collections with their prices. There is product filter button on the left side of the page. Also you can choose the collection name too on the left side of the page. With this filter you can find whatever you want in a short time. And when you click the product you can see the product details under the picture of product.  

The next page I clicked on is 'press&media' page. In this page there are many interviews and news about Nate Berkus and his designs. When you clicked on the news, it  directs you to the link and you can read the details and interviews from there. 

The next page I clicked on is 'the latest' page. In the latest page there are his latest designs and again some interviews he done recently and some suggestions about holiday gifts and designs. And you can click the article and read more and learn more information about article.

Finally I clicked on the 'about' page. In this page there is more information about Nate Berkus and his work. We can see some sentences that Nate Berkus told with taking up most of the page. And there is also a button to follow Nate Berkus on Instagram. 

I quite liked the website there is a lot of information about both designer and the designs. It was easy the find the information that I wanted to know. The pictures of the designs and products were really good, I could see everything in clear and  proper. 

Dorothy Draper

The next website I am looking at is Dorothy Draper's. In the home page her company name written in  the lower left corner with strange text style in white color. And it draws attention because all the designs are colorful and we can see easily the name of the company. Just below that there is a 'about us' button. And it directs you to the about page. In the background there are some designs that Dorothy Draper designed and they changed automatically in every 5 second. There are social media icons on the left hand side of the page. I think they are little small to recognize, they needed to be bigger. In the upper left corner of the page there is a logo of the Dorothy  Draper's company. Her copyright year is 2024 which this shows they didn't update their website for 2 months. 

First page I clicked on is 'portfolio' page. When you clicked on the portfolio button in the header there are 3 options appear which they are; commercial portfolio, residential portfolio and historical portfolio.

They categorized all the designs which is quite useful and wrote the names and the year when they designed. When you click the design there are a lot of photos of the design. But there is no information about design only the year and the photos. I expected some information about designs to understand the design. 

The next page I clicked on is 'about' age. Under about button there are 4 sections which they are; about us, events, partners and shop. In 'about us' there are some information about both Dorothy Draper and her company. And also there are some service information which they do and photos of the 'Draper Team'.There are some recent news at the bottom of the page. There are some events with date and time information in 'events' section. In 'partners' section there are some partners which Dorothy Draper Company worked together and also includes links that will direct you to the partner's website. When you clicked the 'shop' section it directs you to the 'DorothyDraperHome' shop website. 

The next page that I clicked on is 'history'. In this page, there is an article about the history of Dorothy Draper Company. There are also biographies of Dorothy Draper and Carleton Varney. Carleton Varney is who wrote the biography of Dorothy Draper and worked in Dorothy Draper Company. You can read the biographies by clicking the links.

The next page that I clicked on is 'press' page. In this page there are some news about Dorothy Draper Company and their designs. You can read news by clicking the link.

The last page that I clicked on is 'contact' page. In contact page there is a section on the left side of the page that you can send an email to them. On the right side of the page there are telephone numbers of the offices's. Just below that there is an email address too. And under the email address there is a social media bar. 

It was fun to evaluate this website. Website is so colorful and there are many photos of designs. Overall this site is easy to use and find the information that you want to find. But I think , it would be better if more information was written on the designs.

Comparison

The two websites that I looked are both good to use and find something in the website. Both of them are clean, eye catching and not boring websites. Their styles are quite different from each other , Nate Berkus uses more casual and minimalist style in his designs; on the other hand Dorothy Draper uses more colorful and patterned in her designs. In Nate Berkus's designs he describes more about design however Dorothy Draper's designs she uses only photos to show the design. Also in Nate Berkus's website there is a search button which is quite useful and time saver but there isn't any in Dorothy Draper's website. And there is nothing  ,except copyright and the logo of the website in ,the footer of  Dorothy Draper's website. Nate Berkus's website has more description and information about designs that he made and also his website is more simple and basic. Because of these his website is better and user friendly.