As subtle as the clink of glass on marble, your martini arrives crystalline and cold. With a twist of citrus or the briny weight of an olive, it’s bold in its components. More spirit than tonic.
Ordering a martini says you know exactly what you want, and you’re not afraid to ask for it. Your cocktail of choice has precision, elegance, and a little promise of danger. A martini signals confidence without needing to boast; it’s the calling card of someone who appreciates mystery. Someone who moves through the world with a quiet kind of authority. Whether it’s dry, dirty, shaken, or stirred, there’s an unspoken message: this is someone who doesn’t waste time, who understands elegant allure, and who enjoys life on the edge—one cold, clear sip at a time.
For an order this tall, consider us intrigued when TONIC launched their new template collection, Martini.
Now you may be thinking—the person I described earlier, who confidently orders their cocktail straight up, wouldn’t dare entertain the generic nature of a website template. But that’s where you’d be wrong. Nothing is more customizable than a martini. Trust me, I spent an entire summer as a bartender in a small town in Montana at a martini bar.
Our menu was two pages front and back. Everyone from the California rhinestone cowgirl to the weathered ranch hand had their martini of choice. All tailored and delivered in tall, gleaming stemware by their bartender.
In this case, consider us your Martini template bartender, and we’re here to craft your signature drink. Martini is a fantastic starting point, and our customization service will take it from stylish to signature.
Starting with the Martini Showit Website Template
The day the Martini Template hit the internet, my phone blew up with clients wanting to try it out.
This was a design our community had been craving. A bold, glamorous step into the digital world with the structure and functionality to back it up. You can’t help feeling confident with a design like this one.
Take it from TONIC—
“The Martini Showit website template is for those who want their brand to show up, straight up, and look good doing it. In an era of disposable templates and AI-everything, it’s a return to what’s always worked — truly beautiful, editorial design that tells a captivating, fully-human story. Like a movie, you have to watch ‘til the end. A classic, with a modern twist. Created for any brand seeking a stage to speak up, rise, move up—Martini allows you to do it as your strongest self.”
There are a few reasons in particular we’re obsessed with this new collection.
The Apéritif Font
After scrolling through messages from clients wanting to switch over to Martini immediately, I myself was quickly captivated by a new font I’d never seen before. I employed my tools and search engines to research and try to find this sexy new font, only to discover that it was specifically made for this template collection in a Jen Wagner x TONIC collaboration.
Talk about effortlessly cool.
So, already, we’re starting with something showstopping, which has just hit the internet and is available exclusively to Martini customers.
Clean Hierarchy
In what’s increasingly becoming a hallmark of TONIC designs, the typography is clean, and the size makes it easy for your viewers to quickly scan your website and find exactly what they’re looking for. It’s truly showstopping design, and we’d expect nothing less from a template pulling from the staying power of a classic martini.
Unexpected Animation
There are some unexpected design moments in this template that I haven’t seen yet in the template world. Scrolling emphasized text and headline movement, along with interesting GIF ideas, made you eager to keep seeing what else the page might hold.
For those looking for an almost cinematic experience from their website… you’re in the right place.
Why Start with a Template?
When it comes to Showit, there’s no reason not to start with a template design. We’ve designed both custom and template websites, and there’s something about a template that creates a playground for new ideas. Every aspect is already customizable; you’re simply cutting down on time structuring a page and developing key unique features like movement and animation.
Choosing a Template
A cheap template will give you limited options. You’ll see a beautiful sales page and end up with a meager handful of pages that are more or less all structured the same. This means you’ll end up building more from scratch to meet your needs, and you’ll likely require design and development support to make it happen, ultimately spending custom prices.
TONIC’s Martini website includes 24 unique pages, meaning you have literally hundreds of ways to build a page when you mix and match canvases. From my experience, cheaper websites tend to have 4-6 standard pages. When you do the match, what you receive from TONIC far surpasses in value what you think you’re paying for when you save your money.
Custom or Semi-Custom
As an agency that does both custom and semi-custom, I typically recommend the semi-custom route for 75% of our clients. Of course, there are businesses with 30-40+ pages and high functionality needs who wouldn’t benefit from a template and need something tailored to their unique needs. In those cases, the projects tend to be in the $20k range due to what’s required to build from scratch.
For most businesses, we can create epic websites tailored to you and your brand for a very small fraction of the cost, still delivering a signature, unique experience. You might be surprised to hear this, but the benefit of a template is actually not in the aesthetic design. It’s in the setup and page structure that cuts down on development time, allowing us to spend more time on design and styling and less time in the weeds of functionality.
It’s like buying a historic home with great bones, and so you get to spend your housing fund on exciting upgrades like new cabinets and custom shower tiling instead of needing a new roof (or even worse), foundational work.
Our Customization Philosophy
Your website is an opportunity to build a world for your audience and allow them to immerse themselves in your brand. So yes, your website is a huge opportunity. And should feel distinctly yours.
You’ll see in our Library of Brands that we create signature identities that represent each unique business and so many diverse styles. We in no way operate like a manufacturer. We see design as a form of expression, and we are your team to bring your vision to life.
We’ll customize every square inch of your template until it feels so unmistakably yours you can’t even recall which template you started out with. While we are huge advocates for the ease and accessibility of template design, we are lovers of customization and the elegance of details.
We’ll do this by leading with your brand’s essence, choosing only the highest-quality content, and considering the full experience your viewer will have on your site. Basically, we seek to unearth your story so that you can confidently stand out.
This is not your plug-and-play creative team.
Is the Martini Pricing Worth it?
If you’ve been eyeing those impossibly chic TONIC templates with heart eyes but are wondering if it’s all just beautiful marketing… let’s break it down. Here’s what you really get when you buy a TONIC Site Shop template—and how to know if it’s the right fit for you.
The Most Custom Template Out There
Let’s start with the obvious: TONIC templates are stunning. But more than that, they’re designed with the kind of sophistication and structure you usually only see in fully custom sites built from scratch.
These aren’t your average plug-and-play layouts. TONIC designs feel elevated, editorial, and intentional, giving your brand an instant upgrade in professionalism and polish. You’re not just getting a website that looks good. You’re getting a site that feels high-end.
If you’re a personal brand, a creative, a service provider, or someone who wants to make a strong first impression, this isn’t a splurge—it’s a strategy.
Showit X WordPress
One of the best things about TONIC templates is that they’re built on Showit, which gives you drag-and-drop design control without needing to know a line of code.
That means you can:
- Easily update your site anytime, no developer required
- Make real-time tweaks as your brand grows
- Fully customize layout, fonts, colors, and more
You get both structure and flexibility. The best of both worlds.
TONIC’s Templates Are More Than Just Pretty—They’re Strategic
TONIC founders Jen and Jeff aren’t just designers—they’re brilliant marketers. That’s what sets these templates apart.
Each design is built to convert, using tried-and-true storytelling, hierarchy, and calls-to-action that guide visitors toward taking action. Whether your goal is booking clients, selling products, or building an email list, your site isn’t just a digital brochure—it becomes a high-performing piece of your business.
The Process of Customization
Here’s where people trip up: they expect to plug in their photos and fonts and boom, their site will look exactly like the demo.
But your website should reflect you, not just the template.
The truth is, if you don’t take the time to align the design with your brand voice, photography style, and messaging, it may never quite hit the mark. That’s why we offer customization services—so you can get the polished feel of a custom site without having to figure it out yourself.
If you’re ready to elevate your brand presence and want a website that looks and feels custom without the full custom price tag, yes. TONIC is absolutely worth the investment.
But remember: like anything else in business, the results depend on how you use the tools. The right design is only as effective as the story and strategy behind it.
And if you want to get the most out of your TONIC template? That’s where we come in. We help founders like you customize these beautiful designs into sites that feel fully aligned, client-magnetic, and uniquely yours.
What Most People Get Wrong with Web Design
As someone who’s been in the design world for over a decade—working with small businesses, creatives, and personal brands—I’ve seen just about every website template on the market. And I’ve also seen what happens when business owners invest in the wrong one.
There are a few potential pitfalls that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stuck — but knowing what to watch for can make all the difference.
The Overdesigner
The first classic misstep is the temptation to overdesign. We’re constantly inundated with ideas, and it only seems to make sense that combining the best parts of all of your inspiration will result in an even better whole. But the truth is that there is such a thing as an over-designed website. And it will hurt your user experience and cause more confusion in the end.
You want your site to be beautiful AND convert to paying clients and customers.
Some of the fancier key features have a bigger impact when they’re paired with simplicity. It’s all about walking the tightrope between simple and elegant design and detailed and highly customized details. When in doubt, let the template guide your choices by sticking to the same balance and proportion of features that the original designer has already tested and considered with care. Especially if it’s the TONIC team!
The Unbranded Site
I know you just want to get your business up and running. But if you use the same fonts and colors from the template, it’s going to feel like… well, the template.
The first way to customize your new Martini site is to infuse it with your own brand styling. Your logos, colors, fonts, and photography that match your style and your brand. When you mix the template style settings with your brand photoshoot and a random logo generated on AI, the resulting website will feel like a cluttered, unattractive sister to the original template. We don’t want that.
Even if you don’t have the budget or capacity for a full branding project, our Brand Styling Sessions will cover the gap. It gives you the brand components needed to avoid being the unstyled version of the template you hoped would bring your business to life.
The Task Master
And finally, there’s the taskmaster. She doesn’t really enjoy design, or web design, and got her template because she needed to cross this ‘problem’ off her list. She’s busy, and her lack of digital presence is slowing her down. She’s just looking to get on with it, but she’s missing a HUGE opportunity with this approach.
Your website is not a project. It’s a storytelling tool for your business. It is one of your biggest opportunities to build authority, sell your offerings, create brand awareness, connect with your audience, and become recognized for what you do. It’s a breathing member of your workforce; it gives life to your ideas.
It’s such a disservice to see it as one more milestone on the way towards success instead of the vessel that could fully bring you to your dream life.
The Sweet Spot
Our team has found the balance between honoring the integrity of TONIC’s superb user experience-driven layouts and our own signature storytelling magic. We specialize in making your template look expensive, and most importantly, unmistakably you.
This kind of visual clarity and brand presence will build confidence in your consumer. And give you an added boost of momentum as you put your ideas out in the world. Simply put, this approach converts well.
Let’s Work Together
If you’re looking at the Martini template with heart eyes just like us, we’d love to help you bring it to life! We’re offering a 10% discodunt on our customization services for anyone using the Martini template for their new website.
Plus, you can get more juice from your Martini collection when you pair it with these garnishes:
