In Abu Dhabi the website is read by procurement.
Abu Dhabi buys differently from Dubai. More of the audience is institutional, more of it reads Arabic first, and more decisions pass through a committee that will open the site to check the company is what the proposal says. I design for that reader: sober, bilingual, verifiable.
Photograph Mathilde Cureau · Unsplash
What is different about a website in Abu Dhabi
The reader is often evaluating, not browsing. Government entities, sovereign-linked groups and large institutions dominate the economy, and their suppliers are reviewed by people who want the registration details, the capability statement and the leadership on a page before a meeting is granted.
Arabic is not optional. In Abu Dhabi the Arabic version of the site is frequently the one the decision-maker reads. It has to be written, not translated, and its typography and layout have to hold the same authority as the English.
Restraint reads as competence. The visual language that works for a Dubai consumer brand can read as noise here. Structure, hierarchy and evidence do the persuading.
- Languages
- Arabic · English
- Currency
- AED
- Domain
- .ae
- Working week
- Mon – Fri
- Privacy law
- UAE PDPL (2021)
How I design a website for Abu Dhabi
Capability, not claims
Registrations, certifications, sectors, leadership and process laid out so an evaluator finds them in one scroll.
Arabic-first bilingual
The Arabic site designed at the same standard as the English, with its own architecture and native copy.
Search for both cities
Abu Dhabi and Dubai handled as distinct search intents with distinct pages, corroborated by the Google Business Profile.
Engineered for review
Fast, accessible and print-friendly, because proposals still get printed.
Platform build
12 – 20 weeks
Rebuild the site as a system the team can run — designed, engineered and search-architected together.
Institutional credibility is a platform build: architecture, content and engineering designed together. A positioning sprint first if the company is repositioning toward a new sector.
Questions
- Do you work with government-related entities?
- With their suppliers and partners, most often. Public-sector procurement has its own requirements; I design the site to satisfy the evaluator and leave the tendering to you.
- Is Arabic more important in Abu Dhabi than in Dubai?
- In my experience, yes. A larger share of decision-makers read Arabic first, and the Arabic site is judged as the primary one more often.
- Are you based in Abu Dhabi?
- DIFC, Dubai, with regular work in Abu Dhabi. Meetings in person are straightforward; the work itself does not depend on it.
- Can one site serve Abu Dhabi and Dubai?
- Yes, with distinct pages for each city that say something specific, and a profile and address strategy that supports both.