Websites for Riyadh, Arabic-first and built to Saudi rules

Most of the regional headquarters licensed under the Ministry of Investment's programme are in Riyadh, and since 1 January 2024 multinational companies have needed a regional headquarters in the Kingdom to contract with Saudi government entities. A regional headquarters website is read by procurement teams, prospective hires and group colleagues abroad, in Arabic and English. It needs clear entity details, a service structure that covers the region rather than one country, and a careers section that does not send Saudi applicants to a global page with no local context.

The city is also building at scale. The Royal Commission for Riyadh City oversees King Salman Park, planned across more than 16 square kilometres with housing, hotels, retail space and a Royal Arts Complex, and Riyadh will host World Expo 2030 from 1 October 2030 to 31 March 2031. For developers, hotel operators, retailers and event businesses, that means websites tied to launch dates, with a sales or booking path and content that changes as each phase opens.

Real estate briefs carry an extra layer. Off-plan sales, and the marketing of off-plan projects, are licensed through the Real Estate General Authority's Wafi platform, and REGA runs an inquiry service for checking real estate advertisement licences. We give project pages a fixed place for those licence references, so your team can show them wherever your legal adviser says they belong. The page pattern itself we know from real estate sites for Pakistani developers, including Serene Tower and ZEM Builders: project evidence first, clear unit and development journeys, and a direct route to enquiry.

Arabic is the Kingdom's language under Article 1 of the Basic Law of Governance, and a business selling to Saudi customers should treat its Arabic site as complete in its own right, not as a partial translation. We deliver Arabic and multilingual sites with proper right-to-left layouts: mirrored navigation and directional icons, Arabic typefaces chosen for long body text as well as headings, forms that accept Arabic input and Saudi phone numbers, and search that works in both scripts. Each language gets its own URLs and metadata so search engines can index it separately.

The language requirement reaches past the pages. ZATCA's tax invoicing guideline says the required details on a tax invoice must appear in Arabic, and an invoice without them is not a valid VAT tax invoice in the Kingdom. It allows Western or Arabic-Indic numerals, and Latin characters for names of international origin, such as brand and product names. For an online store, that shapes order confirmations, invoice templates and the product data your catalogue holds, so we plan Arabic product names and attributes at the start instead of the week before launch.

The Personal Data Protection Law took effect on 14 September 2023, and its transition period ended on 14 September 2024. It covers the personal data of people living in the Kingdom even when the processing happens outside it. Article 12 requires a privacy policy, available before any data is collected, that states the purpose, the data collected, how it is stored and destroyed, and how people exercise their rights. Article 25 bars sending advertising by email or other personal channels without prior consent and a clear way to opt out. On a build, that means a privacy notice linked from every form, marketing consent left unticked, only the fields you actually need, and a written map of where form data goes.

The E-Commerce Law, issued in 2019, requires online stores to show their name, address, contact details and commercial registration number, and to disclose the full price, including taxes and fees, before the order is placed. Consumers can generally return unused goods within seven days, with exceptions such as custom-made items. Since March 2023 the Ministry of Commerce has asked e-store owners to register on the Saudi Business Center's Business Platform rather than the older Maroof platform. We build the footer, checkout summary and returns pages to carry each of these.

E-invoicing affects the store as well as the accounts team. Since December 2021, resident VAT taxpayers have had to issue invoices, including simplified invoices for consumer sales, through a compliant electronic solution, and ZATCA is moving businesses onto the Fatoora integration phase in waves. Wave 25, announced on 24 July 2026, covers taxpayers whose VAT-subject revenue exceeded SAR 187,500 in any year from 2022 to 2025, with integration due by 1 February 2027. Store orders need a clean handoff to that invoicing solution, and we plan the connection with your finance team. On accessibility, the Digital Government Authority audits government websites against WCAG 2.1 AA, and we build private-sector sites to the same level.

The national payment network, mada, was established by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), and banks operating in the Kingdom issue cards that work on it. It has supported online payments and Apple Pay since 2018. A Riyadh checkout should show mada as its own option rather than hiding it behind generic card logos, and offer Apple Pay on mobile. Buy-now-pay-later is an activity SAMA licenses, so we add instalment options only through a licensed provider your gateway supports, and keep VAT-inclusive totals visible at every step.

Our Gulf e-commerce reference is The Closet, a fashion store for a Qatar client, where the work centred on mobile product discovery and a short route from browsing to purchase. GWC Directory, a logistics directory platform for another Qatar client, shows how we structure a large directory of logistics organisations so it stays easy to search as listings grow. A Riyadh brief adds mada, Arabic catalogue data and Saudi disclosures to the same foundations.