How Sitekick built Elixir Shots' fully custom Shopify build

Rebecca Anderson

How Sitekick built Elixir Shots' fully custom Shopify build

Elixir Shots sells cold-pressed wellness shots made from real fruits and root vegetables, without any added supplements. To design and launch their new storefront, they partnered with Sitekick, a design-led agency skilled in web and UX/UI design. Sitekick typically uses Framer for custom builds and was looking for a similar solution that could be used for Shopify theme development without coding. That’s when they found Instant, a complete Shopify store builder app.

Here’s how they brought Elixir Shots’ fully custom-built site to life.

Behind the build: Elixir Shots custom Shopify storefront

Sitekick built Elixir Shots’ site from the ground up, including all key commerce and navigation elements needed for a full-funnel ecommerce experience:

Homepage
Navigation (Header, nav menu, & footer)
Product templates: product, variety pack, and gift card
Collection page templates
Cart drawer

Check out their online store design:

“Instant gave us the flexibility to design custom navigation and a fully custom cart without relying on additional apps or plugins, which was important for the Elixir Shots brand experience. It allowed us to treat Shopify more like a design system than a theme, giving us complete creative control while still benefiting from Shopify’s commerce infrastructure.” - Joel Martin, CEO & Co-Founder at Sitekick

In addition to the core functionality pages, Sitekick also designed additional pages for communicating additional offers and brand/product information:

Subscribe & Save page
Farms Partnership page
Ingredients page
Our story (about page)
Creators program page
Wholesale program page

Why Sitekick chose Instant

To bring their decision vision to life, Sitekick carefully evaluated different tooling options before selecting Instant:

“We chose Instant because it had the strongest UX and UI design capabilities of any Shopify builder we evaluated. Our agency primarily works in Framer, and Instant was the closest experience we found in terms of design freedom, layout control, and overall polish. We prefer building websites from the ground up with fully custom designs rather than working within rigid themes, and Instant allowed us to do that while staying entirely within the Shopify ecosystem.”

Some other key aspects that made Instant ideal for their Shopify build included:

Intuitive to learn and use for both the agency and clients
Flexibility to build what you need, without developer knowledge
A tool that is evolving and scaling for the future of eCommerce

“We also valued how intuitive Instant is despite its flexibility. Even with a high level of design control, it is approachable enough that clients with moderate technical skills can make design updates confidently without breaking the site. That made it easy for us to build something sophisticated while still planning for a clean handoff after launch.

Finally, the pace of development and transparency around Instant’s roadmap gave us confidence in the platform. Frequent updates and a public roadmap signaled that Instant is well supported and actively evolving. That matters to us because we design sites to last and to grow over time, not to be rebuilt every couple of years.”

By picking an all-in-one page builder, they were able to execute their build without needing additional apps, streamlining their tech stack.

The Instant impact: Fast builds with more control

After building with Instant, Sitekick, and their client, Elixir Shots, both saw and felt a direct impact on the success of their business.

For Sitekick, using Instant meant faster builds at a lower cost:

Launched in less than half the time of a previous fully custom Shopify build
Total build cost was under 50% compared to custom-coded alternatives
No ongoing dependency on developers for routine updates
Enabled rapid iteration and continuous optimization

“The biggest impact Instant has had is enabling rapid iteration without the ongoing cost and dependency of developers. Our agency is primarily made up of designers rather than engineers, so no-code tools are essential to how we work. Instant allowed us to design, launch, and refine the Elixir Shots storefront quickly while staying highly cost-efficient.

The total cost of designing and launching the Instant site was less than half of a previous fully custom-coded Shopify site we built. That custom build also took nearly twice as long to complete and remains expensive to maintain. With Instant, we were able to move faster, reduce complexity, and eliminate a significant amount of long-term technical overhead.”

Both the Sitekick and Elixir Shots benefited from the reduced long-term technical overhead after using Instant:

“That impact extends beyond our team. The Elixir Shots team can now manage and update their own site without needing to rely on expensive developers for routine changes. This gives them more control, lowers ongoing costs, and allows the site to evolve continuously instead of being locked behind technical barriers.”

Now, Elixir Shots can continuously scale their theme design to match the growth of their future ambitions.

Building your own custom Shopify storefront with Instant

After switching to Instant, Sitekick now has a designer-first workflow that works inside of Shopify, without the limitations of cost or technical requirements. This has enabled them to launch faster and ensure better collaboration with their clients (like Elixir).

“For both our agency and our client, Instant has proven to be a long-term win, and we could not be happier with the decision to use it for the Elixir storefront.”

This successful Shopify project shows how the right tool can empower both agencies and their clients.

If you’re running an eCommerce design agency and want to see how Instant can be used to build, test, and scale your client projects, chat with us about joining our Agency partner program.