I have a site I’m working on for a pharma company, and the site has
“university” in its name, and is meant to be educational. So I figured
I could get some inspiration by googling that word. There seems to be
approximately two - three different layouts used for all University
web sites. I’m on page 4 of the results, and so far the majority of
the sites are “bar across the top with the search and main branding,
big image carousel-type thing in the middle, three to five columns of
sub-topics across the bottom”. Try it – you’ll be astonished!