What makes a good website design?  
The article 9 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD WEB DESIGN provides examples of good website design and links to other articles.  To summarize:

1 Precendence - guiding the eye
2 Spacing - line spacing, padding, and white space
3 Navigation - where can you go, and where are you now?
4 Design to build - keep it simple
5 Typography - fonts styles, colours, spacing, paragraphing
6 Usability - what your audience wants/needs
7 Alignment - keeping page elements organized
8 Clarity - keeping it crisp and sharp.
9 Consistency - theme your site and stick to it

10 PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE WEB DESIGN in brief:
1 Don't make users think - a web page should be obvious/self-explanatory
2 Dont' squander user's patience
3 Focus user's attention
4 Strive for feature exposure - guide the user through the site
5 Effective writing
6 Simplicity
7 Dont' be afraid of the white space - space between your elements
8 Effective visual communication - organization and typography
9 Conventions are our friends 
10 Test it!  Test everything works on your website, and test it regularly.

FURTHER READING
PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
ELEMENTS OF DESIGN
APPLYING ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES TO WEB DESIGN