Arabic RTL Web Design: Best Practices for Saudi Websites

Bad Arabic websites are obvious — and they're everywhere

If you've spent any time browsing Arabic websites, you've seen the problem. Text that looks like it was run through Google Translate and pasted in. Layouts that are clearly English-first with Arabic awkwardly bolted on. Navigation that flows in the wrong direction. Typography that's barely readable because someone used a Latin font and hoped for the best.

Native Arabic speakers spot this stuff instantly. And in a market like Saudi Arabia, where consumers have plenty of options, a site that feels like an afterthought in their language sends a very clear message: you don't care enough about this audience to do it right.

I want to walk through what actually goes into building an Arabic website that feels native — not translated.

Layout mirroring: it's more than just flipping everything

Arabic reads right-to-left. That means the entire layout needs to be a mirror image of the English version. But it's not as simple as just adding direction: rtl and calling it done.

Things that should flip: navigation items flow right to left. Text aligns to the right. If there's a sidebar on the left in English, it moves to the right in Arabic. Arrows, chevrons, and progress indicators reverse direction. Form labels and inputs align to the right. Card grids read from top-right to top-left.

Things that should NOT flip: phone numbers and math stay left-to-right. Logos keep their original orientation — you never mirror a brand mark. Media playback controls stay standard. Maps don't flip (geography is geography). Code blocks stay LTR.

The best way to handle this in CSS is with logical properties. Instead of margin-left, use margin-inline-start. Instead of padding-right, use padding-inline-end. These automatically adapt based on the text direction, so you don't need a completely separate RTL stylesheet:

.element {
  margin-inline-start: 1rem;
  padding-inline-end: 2rem;
}

html[dir="rtl"] {
  direction: rtl;
}

If your codebase still uses physical properties (margin-left, padding-right) everywhere, retrofitting RTL support is going to be painful. Much easier to use logical properties from the start.

Arabic typography is where most sites fall apart

This is honestly the single biggest problem with Arabic websites. English fonts don't have Arabic glyphs, and the fallback fonts most browsers default to look terrible. If you haven't explicitly chosen and loaded a proper Arabic font, your text probably looks amateurish to native readers.

Some fonts that actually work well on the web: IBM Plex Sans Arabic is clean and modern, great for UI text. Noto Sans Arabic is Google's comprehensive option. Tajawal is popular and specifically designed for web use. Cairo works well for headings. Almarai shows up on a lot of Saudi sites.

Stack them properly in your CSS:

font-family: 'IBM Plex Sans Arabic', 'Noto Sans Arabic', 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, sans-serif;

A few things that trip people up: Arabic text needs more line height than English. Latin text is comfortable at 1.4-1.5x; Arabic usually needs 1.6-1.8x. Arabic glyphs are also visually smaller than Latin characters at the same pixel size, so bump your body text to at least 16-18px. Go easy on bold — Arabic connected letterforms can become hard to read in heavy weights.

And please, test with actual Arabic text, not lorem ipsum. Arabic layout issues only show up with real Arabic content.

Managing bilingual content without losing your mind

Nearly every Saudi website needs to work in both Arabic and English. This creates a content architecture challenge that a lot of teams underestimate.

For URL structure, subdirectories (example.com/ar/, example.com/en/) are generally better than subdomains. They consolidate your domain authority for SEO and they're simpler to maintain.

Language switching needs to be in a consistent spot — header or footer — and use each language's own name. The Arabic option should say "العربية", not "Arabic." The English option should say "English", not "الإنجليزية." And when someone switches languages, they should land on the same page in the other language, not get dumped back to the homepage.

The mistake I see most often: companies put real effort into their English content and then rush through the Arabic version. Saudi users browsing in Arabic expect the same depth of information — product descriptions, FAQs, policies, support docs, all of it. If your Arabic site is a watered-down version of the English one, you're telling Arabic-speaking customers they're second class.

Forms are trickier than they look

A few things to get right: labels and inputs should be right-aligned with proper RTL text direction. Phone fields should default to the +966 Saudi country code. Calendar components should support Hijri dates alongside Gregorian. Validation messages need to be in Arabic — not just translated error codes, but naturally-phrased Arabic. Address fields should match the Saudi format (district, city, postal code).

These details might seem minor, but they're the difference between a form that feels native and one that feels like a chore.

The mistakes that keep showing up

Machine translation without human review. I can't stress this enough — Google Translate output is obvious to native speakers. It might technically say the right thing, but the phrasing sounds robotic at best and nonsensical at worst. Always have an Arabic-fluent person review your content.

Mixed-direction text issues. When Arabic and English appear in the same sentence (brand names in Arabic paragraphs, for example), browsers handle most cases with the bidi algorithm. But complex mixed-direction content sometimes needs explicit dir attributes to display correctly. If you're seeing numbers or English words appearing in weird positions within Arabic text, this is probably why.

Embedded text in images. Text baked into images can't be flipped for RTL and can't be translated. Use HTML/CSS for text overlays instead.

Ignoring Arabic search behavior. Arabic search queries are structured differently from English ones. Keywords don't just translate 1:1. Your SEO strategy needs Arabic-specific keyword research, not just translated English keywords.

Not testing on real devices. Arabic text rendering varies across browsers and operating systems. Test on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on desktop. iOS Safari and Android Chrome on mobile. And test with both Arabic and English system language settings — you'd be surprised how different things can look.

We do this every day

Arabic RTL design is something we've built deep expertise in at Bycom Solutions. Projects like Ejadah Medical and BeautyBoxx were designed Arabic-first — proper RTL layouts, native typography, bilingual content management that actually works. We build Arabic websites that feel native because they are native, not translated English sites with a font swap.

Drop us a line if you need an Arabic website done right.