7 Best Layouts for Websites in 2025 (With Examples)

You have mere milliseconds to make a first impression online. A website's structure is the critical factor that determines whether a visitor stays or leaves, often before they read a single word. The right layout acts as an intuitive guide, directing user attention and creating a seamless journey from initial curiosity to final conversion. An ineffective one creates friction, confusion, and lost opportunities.

This guide moves beyond generic advice to provide a strategic breakdown of the best layouts for websites in 2025. We will dissect the "why" behind what makes each design effective, exploring the user psychology and conversion principles at their core. We won't just show you what works; we'll show you how to build it.

Each example includes a deep analysis, screenshots, and direct links to see the layouts in action. More importantly, we provide actionable takeaways and specific methods for replicating these high-performing structures using the powerful tools within Elementor and Exclusive Addons. Prepare to build a website that not only looks stunning but is meticulously engineered for tangible results. This list is your blueprint for creating a powerful and effective online presence.

1. The Strategic Blueprint: Deconstructing Modern Web Layouts

Our first entry isn’t a single template but a foundational guide. The "Strategic Blueprint" from Exclusive Addons for Elementor is a comprehensive resource that deconstructs the core principles behind the best layouts for websites. Instead of just showing you finished designs, it teaches the psychological and strategic reasoning that makes a layout effective.

This guide stands out by focusing on the 'why' before the 'how'. It meticulously breaks down nine fundamental layout patterns, including the Z-Pattern, F-Pattern, Featured Image, and Asymmetrical layouts. For designers and developers, this is an invaluable asset for making intentional design choices that guide user behavior and support conversion goals.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The real power of this resource lies in its educational approach. Each layout pattern is explained not just visually but strategically. For instance, the guide details how the F-Pattern aligns with natural reading habits on text-heavy pages, making it ideal for blogs and news sites. Conversely, it explains how a Hero layout immediately captures attention for a single, powerful call-to-action.

Key Takeaway: Understanding these foundational patterns allows you to move beyond simply copying trends. You can start building layouts from a place of strategic intent, ensuring your design directly serves the site's primary objectives, whether it's lead generation, content consumption, or e-commerce sales.

Practical Application and Access

This strategic guide is offered by Exclusive Addons, a popular library of widgets and templates for the Elementor page builder. The insights are universally applicable, but Elementor users will find them especially useful as they can directly apply the principles using Exclusive Addons' tools.

• Access: The guide is available as a free blog post and educational resource on the Exclusive Addons website.
• Cost: Free to access. The addons themselves come in both free and premium versions, with paid plans offering more advanced widgets and features.
• Target Audience: Perfect for WordPress developers, freelance designers, and marketing professionals who want to build more effective, data-informed websites with Elementor.

By starting with this strategic blueprint, you equip yourself with the knowledge to select and customize the perfect layout for any project.

Explore the Guide: Deconstructing Modern Web Layouts on Exclusive Addons

2. Shopify Theme Store: The E-commerce Powerhouse

For e-commerce ventures, the Shopify Theme Store is the gold standard for high-converting and reliable online store layouts. Unlike general-purpose marketplaces, every theme here is purpose-built for commerce and rigorously vetted by Shopify. This ensures seamless integration, top-tier performance, and security, making it a definitive source for some of the best layouts for websites focused on sales.

The platform's key advantage is its "try before you buy" model. Merchants can install any premium theme into their store's backend, customize it with their own products and branding, and test its functionality extensively. You only pay when you decide to publish the theme live, completely removing the financial risk of choosing the wrong layout for your brand.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The layouts in the Shopify Theme Store are engineered for one primary goal: conversion. They incorporate established e-commerce UX principles like clear navigation, prominent calls-to-action, trust signals, and streamlined checkout paths. Themes are often designed for specific industries, such as fashion or electronics, with pre-built sections that cater to those niches' unique selling propositions, like lookbooks or technical specification charts.

Every theme is built on Shopify's Online Store 2.0 architecture, which allows for sections on every page, not just the homepage. This provides merchants with immense flexibility to create rich, custom landing pages and tell compelling brand stories without needing to code.

Key Takeaway: A theme from the official Shopify store is more than just a design; it's a conversion-optimized framework. By choosing a layout built natively for the platform, you guarantee compatibility with future Shopify updates and essential apps, ensuring your store remains stable and fast as it scales.

Practical Application and Access

The store is directly integrated into the Shopify admin dashboard, making browsing and installing themes effortless. Extensive filtering options allow you to search by price, industry, catalog size, and specific features like a quick-buy button or sticky header. This helps you quickly narrow down the perfect layout for your business needs.

• Access: Available directly within the Shopify admin panel or via the public-facing website. Themes can be previewed indefinitely before purchase.
• Cost: Free themes are available. Premium themes are a one-time purchase, typically ranging from $200 to $400.
• Target Audience: Ideal for e-commerce entrepreneurs, from startups to large enterprises, who need a reliable, high-performance, and visually polished storefront without deep technical expertise.

Explore the Themes: Shopify Theme Store

3. Webflow Templates Marketplace

For those seeking high-fidelity designs with the power of a no-code visual builder, the Webflow Templates Marketplace is a top-tier destination. It offers a vast catalog of professionally designed, responsive website layouts built specifically for the Webflow platform. This marketplace is an excellent resource for finding some of the best layouts for websites that require a polished, modern aesthetic without writing code from scratch.

Webflow stands out by providing templates that are not just visually stunning but also production-ready with clean HTML and CSS. The integration with Webflow's Designer and CMS allows for deep customization, giving users granular control over animations, interactions, and dynamic content. This makes it a favorite among startups, marketing teams, and creative professionals who need to launch quickly without sacrificing design quality.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The core strength of the Webflow Marketplace is its focus on specific, high-value use cases. You can filter for templates optimized for SaaS companies, portfolios, agencies, or e-commerce stores, ensuring the layout is strategically aligned with your business goals from the start. Many designs incorporate sophisticated micro-interactions and scroll-based animations that elevate the user experience beyond a static page.

Key Takeaway: Webflow templates empower you to implement advanced design trends like parallax scrolling, complex grid systems, and fluid animations without needing a developer. This allows for a much faster path from concept to a live, interactive website that feels custom-built and premium.

Practical Application and Access

Unlike WordPress themes, Webflow templates are built for a fully integrated ecosystem. Once purchased, a template is cloned directly into your Webflow account, ready for customization in the visual Designer. While this offers a streamlined workflow, it does mean committing to the Webflow platform for hosting and management. While powerful, it differs from the flexibility found in other ecosystems, such as these free Elementor layouts.

• Access: The marketplace is publicly accessible for browsing on the Webflow website.
• Cost: Templates are priced individually, typically ranging from $24 to $149. A paid Webflow site plan is required to publish a site on a custom domain.
• Target Audience: Ideal for visual designers, startups, and marketing agencies who prioritize design fidelity and want a streamlined, all-in-one platform for building and hosting websites.

By leveraging Webflow's curated templates, you can achieve a highly polished and professional web presence with impressive speed.

Explore the Marketplace: Webflow Templates

4. Framer Marketplace (Website Templates)

Next, we venture beyond the WordPress ecosystem to the Framer Marketplace, a hub for designers seeking cutting-edge, animation-rich layouts. Framer is a design-led, no-code platform known for its fluid interactions and sophisticated motion effects. Its official marketplace is a treasure trove of templates that embody this modern aesthetic, making it an essential resource for creating websites that feel alive and dynamic.

Unlike traditional template libraries, Framer templates are built from the ground up for interactivity. This focus on motion and a contemporary visual style makes the platform a go-to for portfolios, SaaS landing pages, and creative agency sites where a high-end, polished user experience is non-negotiable. The layouts found here often represent the forefront of current web design trends.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The core strength of the Framer Marketplace is its emphasis on layouts that are not just visually appealing but also strategically interactive. Templates are designed with built-in scroll effects, micro-animations, and seamless transitions that guide user attention and enhance storytelling. This makes Framer layouts exceptionally good at creating an immersive brand experience directly from the template.

Key Takeaway: The templates on Framer Marketplace show how the best layouts for websites can integrate motion as a core strategic element, not just a decorative afterthought. This approach helps capture user engagement, convey sophistication, and make complex information more digestible and memorable.

Practical Application and Access

The marketplace features a vibrant ecosystem of creators, offering both free and premium templates. While the platform is incredibly powerful for visual design, users should note that publishing a site with a custom domain requires a paid Framer subscription. Additionally, as templates are sold by individual creators, support quality and refund policies can vary, so it's wise to review creator profiles before purchasing.

• Access: Templates are available directly on the Framer Marketplace website. You can browse, preview, and purchase templates to use within the Framer design tool.
• Cost: A mix of free and premium templates are available, typically ranging from $30 to $100+. A separate paid Framer plan is needed for custom domains and advanced features.
• Target Audience: Ideal for UX/UI designers, creative agencies, and startups looking to build highly polished, modern marketing sites without writing code.

Explore the Marketplace: Framer Marketplace

5. ThemeForest: The Ultimate Marketplace for Diverse Layouts

ThemeForest, part of the Envato Market ecosystem, is less a single tool and more a vast, global marketplace for website templates and themes. It serves as a near-endless library where developers and designers can find pre-built layouts for virtually any platform, including WordPress, Shopify, and static HTML, making it a critical resource for sourcing the best layouts for websites.

This platform's primary strength lies in its sheer volume and variety. Whether you need a hyper-specific niche design for a dog grooming business or a robust, multi-purpose theme for a corporate giant, ThemeForest likely has hundreds of options. For Elementor users, the rise of "Template Kits" offers modular, import-ready page layouts without the commitment of a full theme.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The strategic advantage of ThemeForest is the power of choice and competition. The marketplace model fosters innovation, with authors constantly pushing design trends to stand out. This allows you to find layouts that are not only visually appealing but also incorporate modern UX principles, from advanced filtering systems in e-commerce themes to interactive timelines in portfolio templates.

Key Takeaway: ThemeForest allows you to leverage the collective creativity of thousands of designers. Instead of starting from scratch, you can find a layout that is 90% of the way there and customize it to fit your brand, drastically reducing development time and cost while still achieving a high-quality, professional result.

Practical Application and Access

Navigating ThemeForest effectively requires a discerning eye. It is crucial to check an item's sales history, user reviews, and last update date to ensure quality and ongoing support. The marketplace provides a powerful filtering system to narrow down choices by platform, features, and compatibility. For an in-depth look at what makes layouts effective, explore these examples of good web page layouts.

• Access: Browse and purchase templates directly from the ThemeForest website. Some assets are also available through an Envato Elements subscription.
• Cost: Varies widely per item. HTML templates can be as low as $5, while premium WordPress themes often range from $39 to $79. An Envato Elements subscription offers unlimited downloads for a monthly fee.
• Target Audience: Web developers, freelance designers, and agencies who need a wide variety of high-quality, pre-built layouts for different client projects and platforms.

Explore the Marketplace: ThemeForest by Envato Market

6. Squarespace Templates

Squarespace is renowned for its all-in-one platform where stunning design is the default, not an afterthought. Its curated library of designer-made templates offers some of the best layouts for websites that require a polished, professional aesthetic with minimal technical fuss. This platform is built for creatives, small businesses, and e-commerce startups who prioritize visual elegance and ease of use over deep customization.

What sets Squarespace apart is its focus on a controlled, high-quality ecosystem. Every template is mobile-responsive out of the box and built to work seamlessly with its "Fluid Engine," a modern drag-and-drop editor. This approach removes the guesswork often associated with open-source platforms, ensuring a consistent and refined user experience from the start.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The core strategy behind Squarespace layouts is "opinionated design." The templates are not blank canvases but thoughtfully structured starting points categorized by use case, such as portfolios, blogs, or online stores. This pre-structured approach guides non-designers toward creating visually balanced and effective sites.

The layouts emphasize strong typography, generous white space, and high-impact imagery, making them ideal for brands that want to convey sophistication and quality. This focus on premium aesthetics means the design decisions are already optimized for a specific, modern look, allowing users to focus on content rather than complex structural changes.

Key Takeaway: Squarespace templates demonstrate the power of a "less is more" philosophy. By providing a curated set of high-quality, pre-designed layouts, the platform enables users to achieve a professional result quickly, proving that an excellent website layout doesn't always require building from scratch.

Practical Application and Access

Squarespace operates on an all-in-one subscription model, which includes the template library, hosting, security, and customer support. The templates are exclusively available to users of the platform and can be customized using the intuitive Fluid Engine editor without writing any code.

• Access: Templates are included with every Squarespace plan and can be browsed directly on their website before signing up.
• Cost: Plans start at $16 per month (billed annually) for a personal website and go up for business and commerce features.
• Target Audience: Ideal for artists, photographers, small business owners, and entrepreneurs who need a beautiful, reliable website without the technical overhead of platforms like WordPress.

By bundling everything, Squarespace provides a predictable and streamlined path to launching a visually compelling website.

Explore the Guide: Squarespace Designer Templates

7. The Foundation of Choice: WordPress.org Theme Directory

For those building on the WordPress platform, the official Theme Directory is the ultimate starting point for finding diverse and secure layouts. This massive repository isn't just a collection of designs; it's a vetted, community-driven resource offering thousands of free themes, each representing a different approach to website structure and presentation.

This platform stands out because every theme undergoes a rigorous review process to ensure it meets strict security and coding standards. This provides a safe and reliable foundation, allowing you to explore some of the best layouts for websites without the risk of malware or poor code often found on unofficial free theme sites. From minimalist single-column blogs to complex multi-grid portfolios, the directory offers a layout for nearly any project imaginable.

Strategic Breakdown and Key Insights

The strategic advantage of the WordPress.org directory is its unparalleled variety and adherence to open-source principles. It empowers you to find a theme that serves as a structural baseline, which you can then customize extensively with a page builder like Elementor. Instead of being locked into a single vendor's design philosophy, you can filter through themes based on specific layout needs, such as "grid-layout," "one-column," or "right-sidebar."

Key Takeaway: Using a theme from the official directory provides a secure and flexible starting point. It allows you to focus on content and customization with powerful tools like Elementor, knowing the underlying code is stable, secure, and compliant with WordPress standards.

Practical Application and Access

This resource is the default choice for anyone working with a self-hosted WordPress installation. The sheer volume of options can be overwhelming, so it's wise to use the feature filter to narrow down choices based on layout, subject, and features. Always check a theme's last update date, active installations, and user reviews to gauge its quality and reliability before installing.

• Access: The entire theme directory is freely accessible directly from the WordPress dashboard (Appearance > Themes > Add New) or its official website.
• Cost: All themes in the directory are completely free to download and use under the GPL license.
• Target Audience: Ideal for all self-hosted WordPress users, from DIY beginners to seasoned developers and agencies looking for a reliable and cost-effective foundation for their projects.

By leveraging this vast library, you can find the perfect structural framework to build upon.

Explore the Directory: WordPress.org Official Theme Directory

Top 7 Website Layouts Comparison

From Blueprint to Build: Choosing and Implementing Your Perfect Layout

We've explored a diverse landscape of the best layouts for websites, from the meticulously structured grids found in the Shopify Theme Store to the dynamic, storytelling canvases available through Framer and Webflow. The core principle that ties all these examples together is that an effective layout is a strategic blueprint, not just a visual container. It's the silent architecture that guides your user's journey, influences their perceptions, and ultimately drives them toward your most important goals.

The most powerful takeaway is that there is no single "best" layout. The ideal structure for an e-commerce giant focused on rapid conversions will differ dramatically from that of a creative portfolio designed to showcase artistry. Your mission is to move beyond mere imitation and instead deconstruct the why behind each successful design.

Synthesizing Strategy into Structure

As you move from inspiration to implementation, remember the fundamental connection between layout and purpose. A Z-pattern layout excels at guiding the eye through a few key elements, making it perfect for landing pages with a clear, linear call to action. In contrast, a multi-column or card-based layout serves content-heavy sites by presenting diverse information in a digestible, non-hierarchical format.

The most effective websites seamlessly blend multiple layout principles. A site might use a dominant hero section to make a powerful first impression, transition into a structured grid to display products or services, and then adopt a single-column layout for a blog post to optimize readability.

Actionable Next Steps for Your Project

To translate these concepts into a tangible result, follow this strategic process:

1. Define Your Primary Goal: What is the single most important action you want a user to take? Is it to buy a product, fill out a form, or consume content? This will be your north star.
2. Map Your User's Journey: Consider the path a visitor takes from arrival to conversion. Identify key information they need at each stage and choose layouts that present this information logically and intuitively.
3. Choose Your Foundation: Based on your goals and content, select a primary layout pattern from the examples we've covered. Whether it's a split-screen design to compare two concepts or a grid to showcase a portfolio, start with a structure that aligns with your objective.
4. Leverage Your Tools: This is where platforms like Elementor, amplified by powerful widget libraries, become indispensable. You aren't limited to a rigid template. You have the granular control to adapt, combine, and refine these proven layouts to create something uniquely suited to your brand.

Ultimately, the best layouts for websites are not discovered; they are built with intention. They are the result of a thoughtful process that prioritizes user experience, clarifies messaging, and aligns every pixel with a strategic purpose. Use the insights from this guide as your blueprint, but let your unique goals be the architect of your final design.

Ready to stop wrestling with code and start building these powerful layouts visually? Exclusive Addons provides over 100 advanced widgets and extensions for Elementor, giving you the creative freedom to implement any of the sophisticated designs discussed in this article. Elevate your Elementor experience and bring your strategic vision to life with Exclusive Addons today.