At SPC14 and ESPC14 I used some custom display templates where I slightly changed the default search center UI. Included is:
- counts to the vertical tabs
- icons for file formats
- department refiner for content
- styled the best bets
- context wire-up for User Segments triggering in query rules
- blog post template
- document link template
The templates work equally well for SharePoint Online as for on-premises.
You can find the templates over at the SPCSR community project at github if you navigate to DisplayTemplates / Search Display Templates / mAdcOW Search Center Templates.
For those interested, check out my ESPC14 slides.
And see David Hollembaek’s and my SPC14 presentation and slide deck over at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC382