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Read the articleThe best website design examples are rarely the flashiest. They are the sites where a visitor understands what is on offer within a few seconds, can read every line without effort, finds the next step without hunting, and trusts what they see. For a Dubai or UAE business, add one more test: the site has to work just as well in Arabic, laid out right to left, as it does in English.
This guide does not rank famous sites. It takes the qualities that make a design good, attributes each to the published guidance behind it, and points to public websites you can open now. Everything described here was visible on those sites in October 2026; sites change, so check them yourself before you send one to a designer.
Key points
- Judge a reference site by trying a real task on it, on a phone, not by a screenshot.
- The first screen should say what the site is for and offer one obvious next step.
- Readable type follows published numbers: GOV.UK sets body text at 19px and limits lines to about 75 characters.
- Visible navigation beats hidden menus in Nielsen Norman Group testing, on desktop and mobile.
- Arabic pages need a real right to left layout, declared in the HTML, with rules for what flips and what does not.
- Speed, accessibility and trust are design decisions, not extras added at launch.
What the best website design examples have in common
Nielsen Norman Group’s ten usability heuristics, first published by Jakob Nielsen in 1994 and reviewed in 2024, are still the most useful lens for judging a site. Three of them explain most of what people mean when they call a design good. Consistency and standards: follow the conventions people already know so they are not left guessing. Recognition rather than recall: keep options visible so visitors do not have to remember where things were. Aesthetic and minimalist design: every extra element competes with the ones that matter.
Read that way, the best website design examples share a pattern. They decide what the visitor came to do and remove anything that gets in the way. A government portal and a luxury brand can both be good references: the style differs, the discipline is the same.
A good reference is a site where you can finish a real task quickly, not a site that looks impressive in a screenshot.
A common problem we see is a brief that lists admired sites with no notes, so the designer guesses which part was admired. The best website design examples become useful only when you say what each one does well.
The first screen: saying what the site is for
Open GOV.UK and the first screen does three things. A single headline says the site is the place to find government services and information. A search box with a clear label sits directly below it. Then come a short list of popular tasks, such as signing in to a tax account or checking a State Pension forecast. There is no slider and no vague slogan.
Stripe’s UAE homepage takes a commercial version of the same approach. The headline states what the product is in one line, a short paragraph explains who it serves, and one primary button invites you to get started. A row of customer logos sits right under the opening message, so proof is next to the promise.
Airbnb’s UAE site puts its main task at the top: a search bar asking where you are going, when, and who is coming. Among the best website design examples for a booking business, this is the clearest: you arrived to search, so search comes first.
What to take from these first screens
- One headline that names what you do and for whom, in plain words.
- One primary action, chosen for the visitor’s most common task.
- Proof close to the claim: logos, reviews or a short fact, not three scrolls down.
- No rotating banners that make the visitor wait to read the message.
Typography in good website design examples
Typography is where many attractive sites fail: light grey text at small sizes looks refined on a design monitor and becomes hard work on a phone in bright sunlight. The good website design examples treat body text as the most important element on the page, because it is the one people spend the most time with.
The GOV.UK Design System type scale is unusually specific about this. Body text is 19px with a 25px line height, and it stays the same size on large and small screens; headings are what shrink on mobile. Every line height is a multiple of 5px to keep a steady vertical rhythm, and sizes are set in relative units so text resizes properly when a visitor zooms. The GOV.UK layout guidance adds a limit on width: main content sits in a two thirds column so lines do not run so long that the page becomes hard to read, usually no more than 75 characters per line.
Apple’s UAE homepage shows the same restraint from a brand angle: each product section carries a heading, one short line and two links, so the type can be large and the message lands at a glance, helped by generous white space.
Arabic type needs its own settings
Apple’s guidance on right to left interfaces notes that Arabic text beside all capital Latin text can look small, and suggests increasing the right to left font size by about two points. An Arabic page often needs a larger size and more line height than its English twin.
Navigation you can see
Hiding the menu behind an icon tidies up a design, and it costs the visitor. In testing reported by Nielsen Norman Group in Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics, hidden navigation reduced content discoverability by more than 20% on both desktop and mobile, and tasks took at least 39% longer on desktop when navigation was hidden. The authors advise against hidden navigation on desktop, and on mobile suggest showing links directly when there are four or fewer top level items.
The Roads and Transport Authority site for Dubai, rta.ae, shows how a large organisation keeps navigation visible. The main menu names its audiences and tasks in plain words: driver and car owner, public transport, business and corporate, our services. Frequent jobs, such as paying a fine or checking a card balance, sit within those menus, and a search field is always in the header.
The best website design examples name menu items after what the visitor wants and keep the list short enough to show; a long service list is grouped, and search carries the rest.
Arabic and English: what the best website design examples do with right to left
A bilingual site is where many of the best website design examples from abroad stop being useful, so look at sites built for both languages. On u.ae, the UAE Government Portal, the English pages offer an Arabic link in the header, and the Arabic version declares dir="rtl" on its root HTML element. Apple’s Arabic UAE site does the same, and keeps product names in Latin script inside the Arabic text, while category labels are translated.
That root declaration matters. The W3C article Structural markup and right to left text in HTML advises adding dir="rtl" to the html tag whenever the overall document direction is right to left, and not using CSS to set the base direction. It also says the language attribute does not set direction on its own, and recommends dir="auto" and the bdi element for mixed content such as user names or form input.
What flips and what stays
Mirroring is not flipping the whole page like an image. Apple’s right to left guidance gives clear rules, and the best website design examples in Arabic follow them:
| Element | In a right to left layout |
|---|---|
| Back and next arrows, sliders, progress bars | Reverse direction, so a back button points right |
| Icons showing reading direction or motion | Flip to match the layout |
| Logos, checkmarks and universal symbols | Do not flip |
| Icons of real objects, such as a clock or a pencil | Generally do not flip |
| Photographs and general artwork | Do not flip; make a new version if direction matters |
| Digits inside a number, phone or card number | Never reverse their order |
A mirrored logo or a reversed phone number is the quickest sign that a site was flipped, not designed. Our guide to building one Arabic and English website covers URLs, hreflang and fonts in more depth, and our Arabic website development page explains how we build it.
Mobile, speed and accessibility as design choices
The GOV.UK layout guidance says to design for small screens first, starting from a single column, and for different screen sizes rather than specific devices. The best website design examples on a phone are the ones where the designer decided early which block the visitor needs first.
Speed is decided at the design stage too, and the best website design examples keep hero media, images and web fonts light. Google’s Web Vitals guidance sets good thresholds of Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. Our Core Web Vitals guide explains what each number means for a Dubai site.
Accessibility follows the same logic. WCAG 2.2 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text, and a minimum target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels for pointer targets, with some exceptions. GOV.UK and RTA both start with a skip link to the main content, a small detail that keyboard and screen reader users notice at once. For the full picture, read our website accessibility guide for UAE businesses.
Trust signals the best examples put in plain sight
Nielsen Norman Group’s article on trustworthiness in web design, by Aurora Harley, sets out four credibility factors: design quality, upfront disclosure, comprehensive, correct and current content, and connection to the rest of the web. Typos and broken links weaken credibility, and visitors expect contact details and policies to be easy to find rather than hidden.
You can see each factor in the best website design examples above. Stripe places customer logos under its headline, Airbnb shows a rating on every listing card, u.ae lists a digital accessibility statement in its footer, and Apple’s footer gives a store locator and a phone number.
For a UAE business the equivalents are simple: a real office address, a phone and WhatsApp number that someone answers, your trade licence name matching the site, and genuine reviews linked to their source. Among the best website design examples, trust comes from details that are checkable, not from badges.
A checklist for briefing your own website design
Use this when you send reference sites to a designer or agency. For each of your best website design examples, write one line saying which item below it does well.
- First screen. One headline naming what you do, for whom, in Dubai or across the UAE. One primary action. Proof near the top.
- Tasks. The three things most visitors come to do, in order, each reachable in one or two taps.
- Type. Body text size and line height agreed for English and Arabic separately, with lines kept to a readable width.
- Navigation. Menu labels in the visitor’s words, visible on desktop, and a plan for mobile.
- Arabic. A designed right to left version, declared in the HTML, with the flip rules above applied to icons, arrows and numbers.
- Mobile. Layouts designed from the phone up, tested on real devices.
- Speed. A limit on hero media, image weight and number of fonts, checked against the Web Vitals thresholds.
- Accessibility. Contrast, target size, focus states and a skip link agreed as requirements, not left to chance.
- Trust. Address, phone, licence name, reviews and policies placed where visitors look for them.
- Sample page. Ask to see one key page on a phone, in both languages, before the full design starts.
If you are still choosing who to work with, our guide to choosing a website company in Dubai covers scope, ownership and proposals.
How Digital Marketing Dubai can help
Our team designs bilingual Arabic and English websites with proper right to left layouts, and you approve the full design before development begins. If you have a list of sites you admire, send it with your brief and we will tell you which qualities fit your business and which do not. Our web design service explains how a project runs, our UI UX design page covers portals and platforms, and you will receive a written fixed price proposal within 45 minutes during business hours, with no obligation.
