Arabic first, English equal, and a site the Kingdom will trust.
Saudi buyers read Arabic and judge quickly. A website that opens in English with an Arabic toggle in the corner has already told them where they rank. I design Saudi sites Arabic-first — architecture, typography, copy — with an English site of equal standard for the international side of the business.
Photograph Mishaal Zahed · Unsplash
What is different about a website in Saudi Arabia
Arabic is the primary experience. The right-to-left site is not a mirror of the English; it has its own hierarchy, line lengths and type sizes, and copy written by a native Saudi writer in the register the sector uses. Machine translation is visible to a Saudi reader in the first sentence.
The market is moving fast and is regulated. New sectors, new licences and a personal data law with real requirements mean the site has to be built to change — and to handle consent, forms and data with care.
Local rails are expected. Saudi customers expect local payment methods, Saudi phone formats, delivery partners and the platforms the market already uses. A site that ignores them looks foreign, and foreign converts poorly.
- Languages
- Arabic first · English
- Currency
- SAR
- Domain
- .sa · .com.sa
- Working week
- Sun – Thu
- Privacy law
- Saudi PDPL (2023)
How I design a website for Saudi Arabia
Arabic-first architecture
The Arabic site designed first and the English derived from it, both as full sites on one domain with correct hreflang.
Native copy
Written or reviewed by a native Saudi Arabic writer, in the sector’s register, not translated from an English draft.
Saudi integration
Local payment methods, phone and address formats, delivery partners and platforms designed in from the start.
Riyadh and Jeddah search
City pages with real content, profiles in the Kingdom, and schema that names the markets served.
Platform build
12 – 20 weeks
Rebuild the site as a system the team can run — designed, engineered and search-architected together.
An Arabic-first site is almost always a rebuild rather than a retrofit, which makes it a platform build — with a positioning sprint first when the company is entering the Saudi market for the first time.
Questions
- Should the site be Arabic only?
- Rarely. Most Saudi businesses have international partners, suppliers or investors who read English. Arabic first, English equal is the pattern; Arabic only when the audience is entirely domestic.
- Do you build Saudi online stores?
- Yes, on Shopify or on the local platforms where they fit the business better. I have a separate Arabic page on choosing between them.
- Do you work in Riyadh and Jeddah?
- Both, from Dubai, with visits when the project needs them. The two cities are different markets and I design the search architecture to reflect that.
- What about the personal data law?
- Forms, consent, cookies and data handling are designed to the requirements of the Saudi PDPL. I am not a lawyer; I build to the guidance and flag what needs legal review.