Building a bilingual Arabic and English marketplace for web and mobile

For a marketplace serving Saudi households, Arabic is not an add-on. Many customers and providers will prefer it, and some will switch between languages depending on the task. Both need to feel native on web and mobile.

The visible change is right-to-left layout: navigation, directional icons, progress indicators and forms all mirror. Build components that flip automatically rather than patching screens one by one, and test the awkward spots such as mixed Arabic and English text, numbers and phone numbers.

The less visible change is content. The service catalog, quote requests and notifications all need properly written Arabic, not literal translations, and a content model that treats each language as first-class data so providers can describe their services in the language they actually use.

Search and matching need care too. Customers describe the same job in different words and dialects, so synonyms and spelling variants in the catalog make the right providers easier to find.

Finally, test with real Arabic-speaking users on real devices. Layout bugs and awkward phrasing are easy to miss for anyone who doesn't read the language every day.