Designing a Successful Website Layout
Joshua Johnson outlines 10 website layouts that are used frequently throughout the web. These designs provide clean, professional looks while allowing the user to display as much content and images as needed. While these by no means are all the designs available, they do provide you with some ideas of what you are looking for in a website to best reach your prospective clients. He suggests that designing a website layout has to do with both science and art and that keeping a layout simple and clean can create a great looking website.
For example, two options, including the “Three Box” and “The Five Box”, involve a strong large upper block and either a 2 or 4 smaller box layout immediately below. Gliffen Designs (https://gliffen.com/) is a great example of a Three Box design, and Westwood Curtis (http://westwoodcurtis.com/ ) has a great example of a Five Box Design.
Other options, as suggested by Joshua, include a photo or graphic as either the main screen or a featured component of the screen. To get an idea of a Full Screen Photo design, you can visit The CGA Academy’s website at http://cgaacademy.com/.
There are also more complicated designs. For example, to view a Fixed Sidebar design, you can visit Krikor Architecture at http://krikorarchitecture.com/. In this example, the sidebar is on the left although you could put the sidebar on the right if you so choose. A great example of the Gallery design is the Emerg-A-Care website (http://emergacare.com/ ) where several images are actually links to other pages on the website. An Advanced Grid example would be www.cnn.com where the sections are in blocks and easily form a grid look.
Other designs include a Featured Graphic, a Featured Photo, a 3d Screenshots or a Power Grid. You can view samples at https://designshack.net/articles/layouts/10-rock-solid-website-layout-examples/ where Joshua includes links to download the various templates.
While Gliffen may use some of these designs for some of their clients as best suited for the content and purpose of the website, they will specifically design the website to best fit the company’s needs. No two business are the same and it is important to have a functional and clean looking website to help serve your clients’ needs.