Best way to integrate "customization" to the front page #First question

We are making a Drupal 7 theme for one of our customers.
The company wants to be able to edit the frontpage easily, without any coding skills.

Atm we got this: 

Image 1



Image 2



But this is totally not user friendly.
We made a block, and put block content in it, for this one it was just html.
But what we want is more like a wordpress "customizer" or something?

Maybe this is something that is totally basic in Drupal 7 but we just missed it?

#Second Question

The people (Employes of our client) that will manage the website when launched. Will they have to work in de basic Drupal 7 dashboard, or is there a way to make your own dashboard in the style of your website?
As a possible starting point, you might use the Panels and Panelizer modules.

When you define a custom CTools page (using the Page Manager module included with the CTools module), you can define its layout and content.

Concerning your second question, it is also possible to edit the page without moving to the administrative interface, by using the IPE (In Place Editor) provided by Panels.

You should be able to find many tutorials about Panels, in drupal.org too: https://www.drupal.org/node/1857644