Starting to notice and judge good web design

I am beginning to notice what I determine to be good web design. I went to the Hermitage site and really admired the design of the home page. "Wow!", I thought. "I'll never know who did this web design, but it sure is good." Then I clicked a part of it and it led me to an impressive display for the company that designed the site. They show the homepage they created for each of their important customers.  What is really interesting is that they tell what the customer came in looking for and then what web design content was selected to play up the customers products.