A flexible front page layout tool
EDIT:
I realize there is a more generic question here, so I copied my answer over there.

A combination of the following modules can get you quite far:


Display suite
Block reference
Entity reference
Field collection
Bean
Inline Entity Form
Multiple Selects


How?


Create a node type "frontpage".
Add a multiple-value block reference field with "Multiple Selects list" widget.
Set up some bean types to allow different kinds of fancy boxes that can be placed on the frontpage.
In addition you can have Views blocks to be used in the block reference.
One of the bean types could have a multiple-value entityreference to e.g. reference a bunch of products (and have them sortable). I generally prefer this over nodequeue.
Use Display suite to define how each bean and the frontpage itself should be displayed.
Use Display suite custom field templates to have decorated boxes around each bean/block in the blockreference, or each product, etc. Check hook_ds_field_theme_functions_info(). This stuff is powerful and awesome!
Tell the client / content editor to use the contextual links to edit individual beans.


This should give you some material to play with ..
More detailed questions should be discussed in dedicated stackexchange questions, since this is quite broad.