Arabic-first websites for Saudi businesses

Saudi Arabia's Basic Law of Governance names Arabic as the language of the Kingdom. For a Saudi-facing business, that makes the Arabic site a first-class product, with English beside it for partners, investors and staff who don't read Arabic. It should not be an English site with a translated copy attached late in the project.

Right-to-left delivery involves more than flipping text direction. Navigation, sliders, progress steps and directional icons mirror. English brand names, SKUs and phone numbers sit inside Arabic sentences without scrambling. Arabic type has to stay readable at small mobile sizes, and forms must accept and validate Arabic input. We build both language versions from one design system, so a new section or product appears in both without a second build.

Search follows the same logic. Google recommends a separate URL for each language version, rather than switching language through cookies or browser settings, and hreflang annotations that tell it which pages are versions of each other. That lets the Arabic and English pages each reach people searching in that language. We set this up before launch instead of retrofitting it later.

Design reviews start on a phone. The Communications, Space and Technology Commission's Saudi Internet Report 2024 found that mobile phones accounted for 99.4% of internet use, with usage peaking between 9 pm and 11 pm. We test the Arabic mobile layout first, and we schedule releases for the Riyadh morning rather than that evening peak.

mada, the national electronic payment system, added e-commerce and Apple Pay payments in 2018. Online use has grown quickly since: Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) data reported by Arab News put e-commerce spending on mada cards at SR29.86 billion in July 2025, up about 79% on a year earlier. The CST's internet report also found that 93.1% of online shopping happened on local websites. Saudi shoppers mostly buy from local stores, so a checkout should present mada and Apple Pay as primary options, not afterthoughts behind international card logos.

Instalment payments sit inside the same regulated system. SAMA licenses buy-now-pay-later providers: Tamara received its permit in 2023 and Tabby Finance its licence in November 2025. SAMA also publishes a list of licensed payment service providers. Before integration starts, we check your payment gateway against that list and your instalment provider against SAMA's licensing announcements.

Delivery details deserve the same attention. Saudi Post's National Address gives each building a building number, street, secondary number, district, five-digit postal code and city, plus a short address of four letters and four numbers. Saudi Post says using the address speeds up deliveries without extra calls to the recipient, so we design checkout address fields around it in both languages.

The Gulf client work we show is in Qatar, and we present it that way. The Closet is a fashion storefront that brings a broad catalogue into a focused shopping path that stays direct on any device. GWC Directory makes a large logistics ecosystem searchable without the interface becoming dense. Saudi retailers and logistics firms face the same problem: a lot of content that still has to be easy to scan on a phone.

Logistics is a national priority. Transforming the Kingdom into a logistics hub is one of the four pillars of the National Transport and Logistics Strategy published by the Ministry of Transport and Logistic Services. For carriers, forwarders and industrial suppliers, that can call for bilingual directories, partner profiles and quote-request tools rather than another brochure site. The directory and discovery patterns behind GWC Directory are the closest match in our work.

Our real estate launches, 360 The Residences, ZEM Builders and Serene Tower in DHA Multan, were built for Pakistani developers. The structure transfers: project storytelling, unit journeys, construction progress and enquiry routing. The regulation does not. The Real Estate General Authority (REGA) licenses property advertising, including on digital platforms and social media, and an advert's validity can be checked by its licence number through REGA's inquiry service. We give each listing template a field for that number, so buyers can verify a property advert against REGA's records.

Riyadh is two hours behind Islamabad all year, so a 10:00 review in Riyadh starts at noon in Islamabad. The Saudi week runs Sunday to Thursday with a Friday and Saturday weekend, so we fix review days at kick-off instead of assuming a shared Monday start. During Ramadan, the Labor Law limits working hours for Muslim employees to six a day, so we agree a shorter approval schedule in advance and the launch date doesn't slip.

A project moves through discovery, a bilingual page and content plan, design in both reading directions, a staging build you can review in Arabic and English, and launch checks on redirects, forms, payments and tracking. Decisions are recorded in writing, so an approval given in a Riyadh call is not lost between time zones. After launch, Essential Care at USD 39 a month covers updates, backups and monitoring. Small content edits start with Business Care at USD 79, and stores with mada or instalment checkouts fit Commerce Care at USD 149, which adds checkout and payment-flow checks.