The short answer: a Chase, BC business needs a fast, mobile-first website with Google Maps integration and clear contact information — not because foot traffic is high, but precisely because it isn't; when customers can't stumble across you on the main street, the internet is often the only way they find you.
Chase sits about 70 kilometres east of Kamloops on the Trans-Canada, at the west end of Little Shuswap Lake. It's a tight community — around 2,500 people — and when something needs doing, people ask around first. That word-of-mouth culture is real, and it's valuable. But it's also finite.
When someone moves to Chase, passes through, or searches from a few towns over, they're going online first. If your business isn't findable there, they find someone who is.
The small-town website mistake
A lot of Chase business owners fall into one of two traps:
- "We're too small to need a website" — understandable, but the opposite is often true. In a smaller community, foot traffic is limited. A website works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, reaching customers you'd never cross paths with otherwise.
- "We set something up on Wix a few years back" — and it's sitting there, unoptimised, slow on mobile, and invisible in local search. Having a website and having a working website are two different things.
What a Chase business website actually needs
Mobile-first performance. Most people searching from rural BC are on their phones. Connection speeds outside Kamloops vary — your site needs to load quickly on a three-bar LTE signal, not just on fibre at home. Heavy templates and uncompressed images are the two biggest killers.
Google Maps integration. Your Google Business Profile (GBP) and your website should work together. When someone searches "Chase BC mechanic" or "hair salon Chase BC," Google pulls its results from your GBP listing — but a linked, optimised website strengthens that ranking. The two systems reinforce each other.
Clear contact information above the fold. In a small town, you're often the closest option — but customers need to know in two seconds how to reach you. Phone number, service area, hours: front and centre, not buried at the bottom.
Service pages that say where you operate. Your site should explicitly mention Chase, the Shuswap, the North Thompson, and any other communities you serve. Google needs to read it to trust it. "Serving all of the Chase and Shuswap area" buried on an about page isn't enough — it needs to be in your headings and your page titles.
A reason to contact you. A website that explains what you do but doesn't tell someone what to do next is a missed opportunity. A clear call to action — book, call, get a quote — on every page.
Why DIY builders fall short for local search
Squarespace, Wix, and similar tools are fine for building something that looks like a website. They're not built for local search in a specific small community. The templates are generic by design — they're not built to tell Google "this business is in Chase, BC, serving the Shuswap." Proper local SEO needs to be built into the page architecture, not added as an afterthought.
The other issue is platform lock-in. When you build on one of these platforms, your content, design, and structure live inside their system. If the price goes up or you need something they can't do, you're starting from scratch.
What it costs
For a Chase business, a simple well-built website — clear home page, services page, contact with a Google Maps embed — typically runs $1,200–$2,500, depending on how many services you offer and how many communities you want to rank in. If you already have a GBP set up and want to expand from there, a focused landing page can come in lower.
The free website cost calculator gives you a range based on your specific situation in about 60 seconds.
Who I serve in the Chase and Shuswap area
I build and manage websites for businesses across Chase, Sorrento, Scotch Creek, Salmon Arm, and the surrounding North Shuswap area — in addition to my base in Kamloops. If you're in a smaller community and trying to compete with businesses in larger centres for Google visibility, that's exactly what this kind of work is designed for.
If you want to know what your current online presence is doing — or not doing — the free website review is the place to start. No pitch, no commitment; just a straight read on where you stand and what's worth doing about it.