When I first started in the advertising and marketing, I was tasked with designing a website- back then, I did not understand many of the integral components of site design as my specialty was print design, therefore I did not account for components such as SEO or proper structural components. Was my site beautiful, of course- I had skills for the beauty, but function- a disaster. So once I gained the education and skills I was able to correct the many mistakes which I made. Now that I have tons of learned experience I am able to suggest the following as far as successful sites. (But, keep in mind that "successful" will always be an opinion- different strokes for different folks.) So I will suggest sites that stick to basic design elements.
Check this article out for an explanation of elements: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/elements-of-modern-web-design-list for good design sites:
For a site which brings character into design check this site out..I particularly like the life section. http://www.austin-williams.com/agency-work.cfm
For a super e-commerce site, check out: https://www.fiftythree.com/pencil also really like the following e-commerce site- which I use all the time- because the site organizes a ton of products effectively. http://www.orientaltrading.com/
