Websites for Qatar in Arabic and English, planned from day one

Qatar's Third National Development Strategy (2024 to 2030) names manufacturing, logistics and tourism as its growth clusters, with financial services and education as enablers. Online, that means platforms that organise a supply chain, visitor and booking content, and credible sites for financial and education providers, alongside retail brands selling direct.

Our Qatar work covers two of those. GWC Directory is a directory platform for a logistics ecosystem, where the job was to make many organisations and categories searchable without the interface turning dense as content grows. The Closet is a fashion storefront built around mobile browsing and a cleaner path from product discovery to purchase.

Real estate briefs have their own shape here. Law No. 16 of 2018 lets non-Qataris own freehold property or hold 99-year rights in designated areas, with The Pearl, West Bay and Lusail among the freehold zones. A developer's site may therefore need to speak to Qatari buyers, resident expatriates and overseas investors in the same visit. We have built launch and project sites for developers in Pakistan, and the same structure carries over: construction progress, residences and unit journeys, location context, and a clear route to enquiry.

Arabic is the official language and English is commonly spoken in public places, so most Qatar sites need both. The real decision is which one leads. A consumer brand may open in Arabic; a B2B platform whose buyers are procurement teams may lead in English with full Arabic parity behind it.

Some of this is law rather than preference. Law No. 7 of 2019 on the Protection of the Arabic Language requires trademarks and trade names to be written in Arabic, with Arabic more prominent than any other language shown, and data on Qatari goods to be in Arabic. The commerce ministry has also required Arabic on invoices, service lists and product labels since 2017, with a second language allowed alongside.

We build the Arabic version as a true right-to-left layout rather than a flipped stylesheet: navigation, directional icons, forms, numbers and dates, and Arabic type that stays readable on small screens. Each language gets its own URLs with hreflang tags so search engines serve the right version, and order confirmations and invoices go out in Arabic as well as English.

Ministerial Decision No. 25 of 2026, in force since 16 March 2026, requires businesses that trade online without a physical shop to hold an e-commerce licence from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with a separate licence for each platform. In September 2026 the ministry opened applications through the Single Window platform, covering 194 approved activities for a QAR 500 issuance fee. Local press coverage of the launch adds that the store's domain must end in .qa or .com.qa and be registered through one of eight providers regulated by the Communications Regulatory Authority. That rule is not in the published Decision, so confirm it with the ministry and settle the domain before the build starts; .com.qa is reserved for businesses registered in Qatar.

A licensed platform must display its commercial registration and e-commerce licence numbers, contact and customer-service details, exchange and return policies and complaint handling, and must offer electronic payment. Changes to licence details need ministry approval. The Consumer Protection Law (Law No. 8 of 2008) still applies too: prices must be shown clearly, buyers are entitled to a dated invoice, and false or deceptive product descriptions are prohibited.

The Qatar Central Bank licenses non-bank payment providers, and its licensed merchant acquirers include SkipCash, MyFatoorah, Dibsy, Sadad and Tap, with PayLater and Tamanna licensed for buy-now-pay-later. Himyan, Qatar's national payment card, runs over the local NAPS network and works on local shopping websites, so confirm your gateway accepts it before launch. A 2019 Ministry of Transport and Communications survey of online shoppers found cash on delivery was the most preferred payment method and that most expected local orders the same day or within one to two days. Check that against your own order data, but payment options and delivery times still belong next to the buy button.

E-invoicing is coming. The Council of Ministers approved a draft e-invoicing law on 6 May 2026; it still has to pass the Shura Council and be issued by the Amir, and rollout is anticipated from January 2027, starting with larger businesses. Qatar has not introduced VAT. Until the final rules are published, we keep order and invoice data structured so it can be exported cleanly.

Qatar's Personal Data Privacy Protection Law (Law No. 13 of 2016) is enforced by the National Cyber Security Agency. Article 22 bars electronic direct marketing without prior consent, and the agency's guidance is specific about what that means on a website: advertising cookies load only after the visitor clicks accept, a consent notice sits above the email field instead of a pre-ticked box, each marketing channel needs its own consent, and the business keeps evidence of every consent, ideally timestamped. Every marketing message must identify the sender and give an easy way to unsubscribe. Firms in the Qatar Financial Centre follow the separate QFC Data Protection Regulations 2021, so confirm which regime applies before the privacy notice is written.

The law does not generally require local hosting. Article 15 tells controllers not to restrict cross-border transfers unless the processing would breach the law or seriously harm the individual. Where a client or sector prefers data in-country, Microsoft has run an Azure cloud region in Qatar since August 2022.

Qatar's National e-Accessibility Policy dates from 2011 and promotes WCAG 2.1, with Mada, the country's assistive technology centre, supporting its implementation. The policy puts particular weight on public-sector adoption, so if you sell to government entities, name WCAG 2.1 in the brief and it is designed and tested for from the start rather than patched later.