Oyama General Store
A website for a family-run general store on the Okanagan Rail Trail. Built so people can book an e-bike, paddleboard or kayak before they arrive, and still find everything else the store does.
Oyama General Store is a family-run store on the Oyama Isthmus in Lake Country, right on the Okanagan Rail Trail between Wood Lake and Kalamalka Lake. It sells groceries and liquor, runs a Canada Post counter and rents e-bikes, paddleboards and kayaks. I built a site that takes rental bookings online with a waiver signed from your phone, and keeps the rest of the store easy to find.
Last updated · Written by Bryce Elliot
The brief
The store does a lot from one spot. Locals come in for groceries, mail, liquor and ice, and in the summer visitors come for the Rail Trail and the lakes. The rental side has rules people need to know before they show up: bookings need at least 24 hours’ notice, the counter keeps its own hours, and every rental needs a signed waiver. The site had to let someone book and sign from their phone, make those rules hard to miss, and still feel like the local store it is, not a rental company.
How I built it
Rentals first.
The homepage opens on the rental counter: e-bikes, paddleboards and kayaks each show a half-day starting price and a Book link that opens the booking page on that category. The hours and the 24-hour advance booking rule sit right under the buttons, so nobody drives out expecting a same-day bike.
Booking and the waiver on a phone.
The rentals page shows live availability, so people pick their dates, choose a ride and check out online. Every rental needs a signed rental agreement and liability waiver, and it is signed from a phone after booking, so pickup at the counter takes a minute. If booking gives anyone trouble, the store number is right there.
The whole store, not just the rentals.
Groceries, ice cream, a licensed liquor store, Canada Post, hardware, lotto and ice all have a place, and the liquor store has a page of its own. The photos are of the real store, its coolers and its counter, and the family tells the story of how they came to run it in their own words.
Pages for the way people search.
A Rail Trail guide covers where to start, which way to ride and what to bring. Separate pages cover e-bikes near Kelowna and paddleboard and kayak rentals, and the blog covers the trail and each of the store’s services. Common questions, like whether there is a Canada Post in Oyama, are answered on the page.
Two sets of hours, kept apart.
The store and the rental counter keep different hours and seasons, so the homepage and the footer list them separately. The map section explains how to get there from Highway 97, and Get Directions opens straight into Google Maps.
Connected to the rest of Oyama.
The store’s Instagram shows on the homepage, which ties the site to the social media I help with, and a banner points people to Lu Lou’s Lakeside Grill next door, which I also built a site for.
The outcome
Someone planning a day on the Rail Trail can see the prices, book an e-bike or a board, sign the waiver on their phone and know the hours before they leave home. A local can check whether the store is open, or whether it has a Canada Post counter, in a few seconds.
The Rail Trail guide and the rental pages give the site a reason to come up when people plan a ride or a paddle near Kelowna and Vernon. These are features of the work. I am not publishing a booking or sales increase without measured results.
From the brief to the finished website
See the decisions in use
- Book a rental before the drive
- E-bikes, paddleboards and kayaks can be booked online, and the waiver is signed from a phone after booking.
See the rentals page - Plan the Rail Trail day
- A trail guide covers where to start, which way to ride and what to bring, with rentals at the trailhead.
See the Rail Trail guide
Project scope: the website, photography, and social media. The Google reviews on the store site are the store’s own, and no booking, traffic or sales figures are claimed.
See how I build sites in Lake CountryA site that takes the booking for you
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