A Dubai website that is found, read and trusted before anyone calls.
In Dubai the website is the first meeting. A buyer opens three or four companies in as many tabs, reads for ninety seconds each, and shortlists on what they can verify. I design for that ninety seconds — in English and Arabic, with the proof where it can be checked.
Photograph Malik Shibly · Unsplash
What is different about a website in Dubai
Almost every Dubai audience is two audiences. The decision-maker may read English, the person who found you may search in Arabic, and the same company can be both on the same afternoon. A site that treats Arabic as a translation bolted on after launch reads as exactly that. The structure has to be bilingual from the first wireframe: two navigations, two sets of URLs, hreflang between them, and typography chosen so the Arabic is set as carefully as the Latin.
Trust is verified, not implied. Buyers here look for the trade licence, a physical address, a landline and a WhatsApp number, and they look for them fast. Photography of a real office outperforms a stock skyline. A page that hides its licence number behind a contact form is a page that loses to the one that shows it.
The competition is dense and mostly identical. "Web design company Dubai" returns hundreds of agencies with the same three claims. The only durable advantage is an argument — a position on what the site is for that a competitor cannot copy without becoming you. That is the part I start with, before a pixel is drawn.
- Languages
- Arabic · English
- Currency
- AED
- Domain
- .ae
- Working week
- Mon – Fri
- Privacy law
- UAE PDPL (2021)
How I design a website for Dubai
Positioning before pixels
Four to six weeks on what the site should argue and to whom, in both languages, before any build budget is committed.
Bilingual by structure
English and Arabic as two first-class sites on one domain: mirrored architecture, RTL layout designed rather than flipped, Arabic type set at its own sizes.
Verifiable trust
Licence, address, phone, people and real photography where a buyer looks for them — above the fold on mobile, not in a footer.
Search built in
Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah architecture, Google Business Profile, schema and Core Web Vitals engineered from the start, not retrofitted.
Platform build
12 – 20 weeks
Rebuild the site as a system the team can run — designed, engineered and search-architected together.
Most Dubai enquiries arrive with a site that is the constraint on everything else. A platform build — design, engineering and search together — is usually the right shape, with a positioning sprint first if the argument is in doubt.
Questions
- How much does a website cost in Dubai?
- It depends on scope far more than on the city. I quote fixed fees after a scoping call, and I have written a guide to what actually moves the number — pages, languages, commerce, integrations and content — so you can size the project before we speak.
- Do you design in Arabic as well as English?
- Yes, and as a structure rather than a translation. The Arabic site gets its own information architecture, right-to-left layout and typography. Copy is written or reviewed by a native Arabic writer; I do not machine-translate.
- Do I need a .ae domain?
- Not necessarily. A .ae domain is a clear local signal and worth having if your business is UAE-only. If you sell across the Gulf, a .com with country pages and correct hreflang is usually the better architecture. I will recommend one on the call.
- Do you work with free-zone and mainland companies?
- Both. The licence type changes what you can show and sell on the site, and I will ask for it early so the design reflects what the business is actually permitted to do.
- Where are you based?
- Dubai, working in person across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah and remotely across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. I have worked in UAE digital marketing since 2019 and have been independent since 2023.