Web Design
Site structure, page layouts and a visual system for your company website, designed right to left and left to right, checked against WCAG 2.2, and approved by you before a line of code is written.
Design, not build
Web design in Dubai decides what goes on each page, in what order, and how it looks and reads in both languages. It ends with an approved set of layouts that a developer can build without guessing. The build itself, including the CMS, forms, integrations, hosting and speed work, is covered on our website development page.
The sitemap, the navigation, and which templates the site actually needs. A services company in Dubai might need eight templates for its web design, not forty unique pages.
Typography in Arabic and Latin scripts, colour, spacing, grid, icon style and how photography is cropped. Built from your brand, or from a brand identity if one is needed first.
What happens on hover, on focus, when a form errors, when a menu opens on a phone. These states are drawn, not left to interpretation.
Structure first
Most weak web design in Dubai fails on structure before it fails on looks. The services page lists everything in one long block, the contact route is buried, and the About page carries the information buyers actually need, such as licences, locations and sectors served.
We start with the questions a buyer asks, in the order they ask them, and map each to a page or a section. That produces a sitemap and a wireframe for every template. Visual design only begins once you agree the structure, because moving a section takes minutes in a wireframe and days in a finished layout.
Arabic and English
Bilingual web design in Dubai is not just the English layout with the text swapped. The whole page reads from the right, so the design has to be drawn that way, and some things must deliberately not flip.
| Element | In the Arabic layout | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Page grid, navigation, sidebars | Mirrored: logo and menu start on the right | The eye enters the page from the right |
| Directional icons (arrows, back, next) | Mirrored | “Next” points the way the reader is travelling |
| Logos, product photos, brand marks | Not mirrored | Flipping them creates a false image |
| Phone numbers, prices, codes, clocks | Not mirrored | Digits in a number still run left to right |
| Media controls and progress bars | Usually kept left to right | They represent time, which users expect in that direction |
| Body text size and line height | Often set slightly larger with more line height | Arabic letterforms carry detail that crowds at Latin sizes |
We also design for mixed text, which is constant in the UAE: an Arabic sentence containing a brand name in English, a Dubai Silicon Oasis address, or a product code. The W3C Internationalization guidance recommends setting the page direction in the markup with the dir attribute on the html element rather than in CSS, declaring the language separately with lang, and isolating embedded text of unknown direction. Our design files mark where those cases appear so the developer handles them deliberately.
For spacing, we specify layouts in terms of start and end rather than left and right. That matches the CSS Logical Properties specification from the W3C, where a property such as margin inline start follows the writing direction, so one set of styles serves both languages instead of two drifting apart.
Accessibility
Many accessibility failures in web design for Dubai businesses are visual decisions: pale grey text on white, a focus outline removed because it looked untidy, links distinguished only by colour. Fixing them after build means redesigning. We check layouts against the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, which became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023 and was last updated in December 2024.
Two examples of what that means in practice. Success criterion 1.4.3 requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, so brand colours are tested before they are used for type. Criterion 2.5.8, new in version 2.2, sets a minimum pointer target of 24 by 24 CSS pixels, which shapes how close together we place small links and icons in footers and menus.
Approval before build
Every web design project in Dubai follows our usual Brief, Proposal, Create, Review, Deliver, Improve pattern, with one firm rule: you approve the full design before development begins.
We review your current site, competitors you respect, and your goals, then send a fixed price written proposal.
Structure agreed first, at phone and desktop widths, in the language that leads.
The home page and one inner template are styled first. Once that direction is right, the rest follow it.
Right to left layouts, form errors, empty states and menus are drawn for every template.
The approved files, a component sheet and notes go to development. Words for the pages can come from our website content writing team in parallel.
Planning a single campaign page rather than a full site? Landing page design is set up for that. Designing a logged in product or portal? See UI UX design. Structure decisions also affect search, so we coordinate with SEO services when a site is being rebuilt.
Selected work
A Dubai investment house, a luxury brokerage and a bilingual physiotherapy practice, each with a different reason for visiting the site.
Website · Corporate · Dubai
A Dubai investment house with a century of business behind it. The site speaks to institutional investors, not shoppers.
shaikhholdings.com
Website · Luxury real estate · Dubai
A brokerage at the top of the Dubai market, where the buyer judges the agency by its website first.
billionairehomesdubai.com
Website · Healthcare · Dubai
A Dubai rehabilitation and physiotherapy practice with one properly bilingual site in English and Arabic.
hmsfmce.comFrom the blog
What an Arabic and English brand guide must settle in writing so printers, developers and writers in the UAE apply it the same way.
Read the article
What UAE trademark law protects and refuses, how registration with the Ministry of Economy and Tourism works, and what it means for your logo.
Read the articleStraight answers
Often, yes. If the current CMS is sound, the new design can be applied to it. If the platform is the reason the site is slow or hard to edit, we will say so in the proposal and explain the options.
Not finished copy, but real headings and a rough draft for the key pages help a great deal. Designing around placeholder text hides problems that appear the moment real Arabic or English content arrives.
It depends on the number of unique templates, languages and integrations. You receive a fixed written quote, scoped to your brief, and during business hours it is normally sent within 45 minutes.
You do. The domain, hosting, CMS logins and code are yours, and handover includes training, a recorded walkthrough and a support window.
It will behave consistently, which is more useful than looking identical. Layouts are designed for small, medium and large screens, and the built site is tested on real devices and browsers before launch.
Sources
Fixed price, in writing
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