Arabic Website Design
and RTL development
Web Tactics is a Dubai studio that builds the Arabic version of your website as a version, not a translation layer. Direction lives in the markup, the Arabic type is chosen for Arabic, and the copy is written in Arabic rather than translated — so the Arabic site reads as though it was designed first.
اقرأ هذه الصفحة بالعربيةMirroring a layout
is not an Arabic site
Three things that break when Arabic is added on top of a finished English site.
Direction belongs in the markup
Setting direction on the html element is what makes a page an Arabic document. A separate stylesheet that flips things afterwards is a second copy of your layout that somebody has to remember to update, and the page nobody checked is where it breaks.
Latin display type has no Arabic in it
The letter spacing that makes an English headline look considered breaks the joins between Arabic letters, and most display faces chosen for a Latin brand have no Arabic coverage at all. Without a face chosen for Arabic the browser substitutes whatever the device happens to have, which is how a designed page becomes an undesigned one.
Not everything mirrors
Navigation, arrows and progress through a form mirror. Phone numbers, prices, code samples and media playback controls do not. Mirroring everything is as wrong as mirroring nothing, and the call has to be made per element rather than by one switch.
Two built versions,
one code base
- Direction set on the document. One code base using logical CSS, rather than a mirrored stylesheet that drifts out of step with the original.
- Arabic type chosen for Arabic. A face with real Arabic coverage for headings and for body text, actually loaded rather than only named in a font stack, so nothing falls back to a device default.
- Copy written in Arabic. Written and adapted rather than machine-translated, because the register a buyer hears is not a decision a translation tool should be making.
- Numbers, prices and Latin names stay readable. Isolated so they keep their own direction inside an Arabic sentence — a price rendered right-to-left is a different number.
- Reciprocal hreflang and a self-canonical on each page. Each language declares the whole cluster including itself, so search engines treat them as one page in two languages rather than two pages competing.
- An admin you can publish Arabic from. If direction breaks inside the editor, the two versions drift apart the first time somebody updates one of them.
What we do not do: build an Arabic version nobody has been given the job of maintaining. A neglected Arabic site — stale content, machine translation, a broken layout — does more damage to your brand than not having one.
What Arabic adds
and when it costs least
Our minimum engagement is ~$3,000 (11,010 AED). A bilingual build costs more than the same site in one language, and the uplift is quoted per project because it follows how much copy and how many layouts there are — asking for it at the start is always cheaper than adding it to a finished left-to-right site.
The final scope and its price are confirmed in writing after a scope review. Below our minimum the honest answer is often a different product — a single landing page, or the Arabic version of a site you already own — and we will say so rather than inflate a scope to reach the floor.
Straight answers
Decide Arabic
before anything is designed
Type, tone and the layout system are chosen once. Choosing them for both languages at the start costs less than adapting one to fit the other later. Send a brief and you get a personal reply within 24 hours.