Arabic Website Development in the UAE: How to Build a Bilingual Site That Works

Arabic website development in the UAE is not a translation job. A bilingual site that works for Emirati, Gulf and Arabic-speaking visitors needs a mirrored layout, fonts chosen for Arabic script, copy written for the audience, and a URL and hreflang setup that shows search engines the right version. Get these decisions wrong at the start and they are expensive to fix later.

This guide is for marketing leads, founders and product owners in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah planning a bilingual website or adding Arabic to an existing one.

Why a bilingual Arabic-English website matters in the UAE

English is the working language of much of UAE business, so it is tempting to treat Arabic as optional. In practice, several audiences expect it.

• Government and semi-government buyers. Tenders, partner portals and public services often expect Arabic content, and procurement teams notice when it is missing or poor.
• Emirati and Gulf-national customers. Many prefer to read in Arabic, especially for financial, health, legal and family decisions.
• Older Arabic-speaking audiences. Visitors who use English for everyday tasks may still switch to Arabic for anything important.
• Regional growth. A solid Arabic version is the base for reaching Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf without starting again.

There is also trust. A careful Arabic version tells visitors a business is established locally and takes the market seriously. A machine-translated one, with broken letters and left-aligned text, tells them the opposite.

RTL website design: what gets mirrored and what does not

Arabic reads right to left, so the whole interface flips. Setting dir="rtl" and lang="ar" on Arabic pages is the starting point, and building the stylesheet with CSS logical properties (margin-inline-start rather than margin-left) means most of the layout mirrors automatically. The details are where projects go wrong.

Navigation and layout

The logo usually moves to the top right, the menu reads right to left, and sidebars, breadcrumbs and pagination swap sides. Carousels advance in the reading direction and drawer menus slide in from the right. English brand names inside Arabic text still read left to right.

Icons and imagery

Directional icons flip: back and forward arrows, chevrons, progress steps and "next" buttons. Icons for real objects do not: logos, play buttons, clocks, checkmarks and search magnifiers stay as they are. Review photography too, because a person facing the text in English may face away from it in Arabic.

Forms, numbers and dates

Labels, checkboxes and error messages align right, but some fields must stay left to right: email addresses, URLs, passwords, IBANs and phone numbers. A classic bug is +971 rendering as 971+ because the browser applies right-to-left rules to a number. The fix is to mark those fields and values as left to right.

Decide early whether to show Western digits (0 to 9) or Eastern Arabic digits, then apply the choice everywhere, including AED prices, invoices and emails. For dates, agree the calendar (Gregorian, Hijri or both), the Arabic month names and the time format.

Arabic typography and font choices

Arabic letters connect and change shape depending on their position in a word, so English typography rules do not transfer. Never apply letter spacing to Arabic, because it breaks the joins between letters. There are no capitals and no true italics, so emphasis comes from weight and size.

Arabic glyphs also carry dots and marks above and below the line. Most designs need a slightly larger size and more generous line height for Arabic to stay readable on a phone.

• Noto Sans Arabic and Noto Kufi Arabic: broad coverage, many weights, free to use.
• IBM Plex Sans Arabic: clean and corporate, pairs naturally with IBM Plex Sans.
• Cairo, Tajawal and Almarai: common on Gulf websites and apps, with a modern feel.
• Dubai Font: free and familiar to UAE audiences. Check the licence terms for your use.

Choose the Arabic and English fonts together so they feel balanced side by side. Our web design process designs both languages in the same file, so Arabic is never bolted on at the end.

Keeping Arabic fonts fast

Arabic font files are larger than Latin ones because each letter has several forms. Loading four weights of two families can hurt Core Web Vitals on mobile.

• Limit each language to two weights, or use one variable font.
• Serve self-hosted WOFF2 files subset to the characters you use.
• Use unicode-range so the Arabic font only downloads when Arabic text is on the page.
• Preload only the main body weight and use font-display: swap with a similar-sized fallback.

Translation vs localisation

Translation converts words. Localisation adapts the message, tone and examples for the people reading them, and that starts with choosing the right register of Arabic.

Modern Standard Arabic is the right default for most website copy. It is understood across the Arab world, reads as professional, and suits legal pages, service descriptions and anything formal. Gulf dialect can work for social media, campaign headlines and conversational app copy, but mixing registers on one page looks careless.

• Use a native-speaker professional translator, then have a second native speaker review the copy on the live layout, not in a spreadsheet.
• Adapt headlines, calls to action and examples rather than translating them literally.
• Keep a glossary of product names and service terms so every page uses the same Arabic wording.
• Decide which brand names stay in English, and allow room in buttons and menus for Arabic text that runs longer or shorter.
• Treat machine translation as a rough first draft at most, and never publish it unreviewed.

CMS options and content workflow

The CMS decides how painful it will be to keep two languages in sync.

Whatever the platform, agree a workflow: English and Arabic drafts move together, nothing goes live in one language only, and one named person owns the Arabic review. Marketing sites usually suit WordPress development, stores fit Shopify development, and products with logins and dashboards need custom web development.

URL structure: subfolder, subdomain or separate domain

Avoid switching languages with a query parameter such as ?lang=ar or with cookies alone. Search engines may index only one version, and visitors cannot share the Arabic page. Whichever structure you choose, the language switcher should lead to the same page in the other language, not the homepage.

hreflang for en-AE, ar-AE and x-default

hreflang tags tell search engines which language and region each page targets, so an Arabic searcher in the UAE sees the Arabic page. Use en-AE and ar-AE when the UAE is your main market, and x-default for the fallback version, usually English or a language selector.

Each page lists every version of itself, including itself, and the tags must be reciprocal. For a services page, the head of both versions would include:

• <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AE" href="https://example.com/services/" />
• <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ar-AE" href="https://example.com/ar/services/" />
• <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/services/" />

Each language version also needs a self-referencing canonical. Pointing the Arabic canonical at the English page is a common mistake that can stop the Arabic page being indexed at all.

Arabic SEO: research in Arabic, do not translate keywords

The most common Arabic SEO mistake is translating the English keyword list. People in the UAE search in Arabic with their own phrases and often mix Arabic and English in one query. A literal translation of "web design company Dubai" may have little search volume.

• Research keywords in Arabic with tools set to the UAE, then check autocomplete and the results page for each phrase.
• Account for spelling variants, such as different forms of alef, taa marbuta and yaa.
• Write Arabic title tags, meta descriptions, headings and alt text. Never leave English metadata on Arabic pages.
• Choose a slug policy. Arabic slugs read naturally but become long encoded strings when shared, so many sites use English slugs under /ar/.
• Add your Arabic business name to your Google Business Profile and keep name, address and phone consistent in both languages.

Our local SEO checklist for Dubai covers profiles and citations, and our SEO services in Dubai include Arabic keyword research.

Testing checklist before launch

1. Every template checked in Arabic on a real phone, not just a desktop browser.
2. Navigation, sliders, drawers and breadcrumbs mirrored, with directional icons flipped.
3. Forms tested with Arabic names, English emails, UAE phone numbers and every error message.
4. Prices, dates and digits consistent across pages, emails, invoices and PDFs.
5. The language switcher keeps visitors on the equivalent page.
6. Emails, SMS, WhatsApp messages and payment pages available in Arabic.
7. hreflang, canonicals, Arabic metadata and sitemaps validated in Search Console.
8. A final read by a native Arabic speaker on the staging site.

What Arabic website development adds to the cost

As an indicative 2026 range, a properly bilingual build typically adds 20 to 40 percent to the cost of the same site in English only. Template-based marketing sites sit at the lower end; custom designs, stores and web apps sit higher. These are market ranges, not quotes.

For the wider budget picture, see software development cost in Dubai. If you are still choosing a builder, read how to choose a software company in the UAE and our comparison of outsourcing vs in-house development.

10silicon builds bilingual websites and web apps for UAE businesses from our engineering hub in Lahore, one hour behind Gulf Standard Time. For a second opinion on an Arabic plan, contact us.

• Arabic
• RTL
• Web development
• Arabic SEO
• UAE