Optimizing Local Search for Kingdom-Based Enterprises
A few days ago, a company director complained that his platform strategy was burning through thousands of riyals with disappointing performance. After examining his approach, I found several critical errors that are remarkably frequent among Saudi businesses.
A few weeks ago, a entrepreneur asked me why his articles weren’t generating any leads. After analyzing his content marketing strategy, I discovered he was making the same mistakes I see numerous Saudi businesses make.
A few weeks ago, a retail client transitioned from traditional digital advertising to visual content and experienced a three hundred eighty-four percent improvement in interaction and a 127% boost in purchases.
Recently, I was consulting with a large e-commerce business that had poured over 200,000 SAR on a beautiful cost-Effective website solutions that was performing terribly. The reason? They had merely transformed their English site without considering the basic experience variations needed for Arabic users.
Recently, a café proprietor in Riyadh expressed frustration that his venue wasn’t visible in Google results despite being popular by customers. This is a frequent challenge I see with regional companies across the Kingdom.
* Repositioning action buttons to the right area of forms and screens
* Restructuring visual importance to flow from right to left
* Redesigning clickable components to match the right-to-left scanning pattern
* Reorganized the form flow to align with right-to-left thinking processes
* Developed a bilingual input mechanism with intelligent language changing
* Optimized touch interfaces for one-handed Arabic text entry
As someone who has created over 30 Arabic websites in the recent years, I can assure you that applying Western UX standards to Arabic interfaces fails miserably. The distinctive elements of Arabic script and Saudi user expectations require a totally unique approach.
If you’re developing or redesigning a website for the Saudi market, I strongly recommend consulting designers who truly understand the complexities of Arabic user experience rather than simply translating Western designs.
Throughout my previous project for a financial services company in Riyadh, we discovered that users were consistently clicking the wrong navigation options. Our behavior analysis showed that their eyes naturally flowed from right to left, but the main navigation components were placed with a left-to-right emphasis.
* Position the most essential content in the right upper section of the page
* Arrange content blocks to flow from right to left and top to bottom
* Apply heavier visual weight on the right side of equal layouts
* Ensure that directional icons (such as arrows) direct in the appropriate direction for RTL interfaces
* Shifted product visuals to the left portion, with product details and purchase buttons on the right
* Modified the product gallery to progress from right to left
* Added a custom Arabic typeface that maintained readability at various scales
* Clearly mark which language should be used in each input field
* Intelligently change keyboard layout based on field expectations
* Place form text to the right side of their corresponding inputs
* Ensure that validation messages appear in the same language as the intended input
* Use fonts purposely developed for Arabic on-screen viewing (like Boutros) rather than classic print fonts
* Expand line leading by 150-175% for enhanced readability
* Implement right-justified text (never centered for body text)
* Prevent narrow Arabic typefaces that compromise the distinctive letter structures