"well-designed" is a very subjective term.
But people here, and myself, are going to tell you that those are not well designed sites. Well designed sites are mostly text, good typography, follow all accessibility guidelines, etc.
I heard some people admire https://linear.app/ but I don't see the appeal myself
Majority of websites often fall into one of two categories:
1. Traditional off the shelf template
2. Look cool but fail when it comes to usability and robustness (those featured on awwwards)
- There's no "user" persona - Craigslist doesn't develop their site to be addicting.
- There are no ads
- The buttons for doing basic actions have not moved
- You don't need to reveal any personal information to use the service
- It does two things, and only two things well - helps buyer buy shit and helps sellers sell shit
I would recommend browsing through some of the critques on the DesignCourse channel. On some videos people submit their site for critique, and he often live edits them to make them better. https://m.youtube.com/@DesignCourse
The most neutral definition of a "well designed" website, without any further context, could be "created in a way that helps users achieve intended goals efficiently, while keeping max number of users happy about its look".
Again, different audiences will have very different answers. Here at HN, sites like https://www.mcmaster.com/ and https://www.craigslist.org win – because HN users appreciate old look and how efficient these sites are.
https://www.apple.com/ is an industry standard of a marketing site for consumer tech. It's not universally "well designed".
Other examples of well done marketing pages: https://www.sketch.com/ ; https://statamic.com/ ; https://linear.app/ got its share of hype recently.
Other times, a website is well designed because its content is awesome and is easy to consume. See https://ciechanow.ski/ and https://www.joshwcomeau.com/
Is https://github.com/ well designed? As an amateur developers, I'd say yes.
Is https://htmx.org/ well designed? Hmm, at a glance, there's no design at all. Is no design also design? That's a rabbit hole.
P.S. I often hear my website is well-designed :-)
Ironically, apple.com doesn't even support dark mode!
Also, the hover menus are a usability nightmare: https://underpassapp.com/news/2023-2-9.html
I really do think lesswrong is a beautifully done site. Minimal, light design without gimmicks and a very functional comment threading system.
I don’t read much content there but it’s always a pleasure when I do.
I love this website so so much.
I suspect most of the websites suggested here will lie in the top left corner. This is exemplified by websites of tech / SaaS companies, with the universal header, a centered display-sized black-weighted heading in Inter, the various screenshots, testimonials, all responsively arranged and come with dark mode, and (possibly falling out of vogue) squishy-squashy Memphis corporates. These are the playgrounds of Tailwind, Vercel, Linear.app, Shopify, PlanetScale, Supabase, etc. Modern at first sight, but quickly dull the senses. Passable for their supreme usability (the Vercel dashboard works better on mobile than many websites on desktop).
On the bottom right corners are the grandiloquent, the pompous, the extravagant. See them on Awwwards. Somehow, I feel a sizeable of Web3 websites fall into this, though I have only superficial exposure to them, with their overuse of transitions and animations.
It's hard to find the exemplary websites, the residents of the top right corner. Some suggest the apple.com website, which I feel is certainly worthy of consideration but whose style I don't really grok. I shall leave here some suggestions, whose merits I hope is clear upon the first visit:
Honorable mentions go to: