How to Build an Arabic Shopify Store (RTL, Checkout & Copy)

Gulf shoppers buy in Arabic. Give them a store that reads right to left, speaks their language and shows prices the way they expect, and you're ahead of most foreign brands selling here.

The good news is that Shopify makes it easier every year. In October 2026 it improved right-to-left support across checkout, customer accounts and its Horizon themes.

You'll still need a few things Shopify won't do for you. That means translating the checkout, picking Arabic fonts, fixing numerals and writing copy that sounds Gulf, not Cairo.

Here's how to build an Arabic Shopify store in nine steps, with a translation app comparison, a price tool and a pre-launch checklist. It's part of our GCC localization guides.

What does an Arabic Shopify store need?

An Arabic Shopify store is more than translated text. It's a store that works right to left, in Arabic, with local prices.

There are five layers to get right:

• Language. Arabic added to your store, with every page, menu and email translated.
• Direction. A theme that flips the layout right to left (RTL) without breaking.
• Typography. An Arabic font, the right digits and correct currency symbols.
• Copy. Product titles and banners written for Gulf shoppers, not machine-translated English.
• Pricing. SAR or AED prices with VAT included, rounded to local price points.

Miss one and shoppers notice. A beautiful Arabic homepage that drops into an English checkout feels half-finished, and half-finished stores don't get the order.

Mobile matters most here. Most Gulf shoppers will see your store on a phone, so test every step on one.

Step 1: Choose an RTL-ready theme

Your theme decides how much work the rest takes. A theme with native RTL support flips menus, galleries and the cart drawer for you. One without it means patching CSS for weeks.

You have three routes:

• Horizon-family themes (free, by Shopify). Shopify says the latest Horizon themes support Arabic, and its October 2026 update named them directly.
• Paid themes tagged right-to-left. The Theme Store's RTL filter lists 24 themes, priced at $150–420. Prestige, Impact, Symmetry and Be Yours are among them.
• An RTL add-on app. Apps such as RTL Master patch themes that lack RTL. Use this only if you can't switch themes.

Before you commit, publish Arabic in a theme preview. Then click through the header, menu drawer, product gallery, cart drawer, footer and search on a phone.

Third-party app widgets break most often. Reviews, size charts, upsells and chat bubbles are often hard-coded to the left.

Our Arabic Shopify themes shortlist compares the RTL-ready options by price.

Step 2: Add Arabic and pick a translation app

Go to Settings > Languages, click Add language and choose Arabic. Keep it unpublished until the translations are ready.

Then pick the tool that fills in the Arabic. For most stores, Shopify's own app is the right start.

	Translate & Adapt	Weglot	LangShop
Price	Free	Free (2,000 words), then from €15/mo	Free (1 language, 50 products), then from $10/mo
Arabic auto-translation
Free auto-translated languages	2	1 (within word limit)	1
Pricing based on	Free (manual translation unlimited)	Words translated	Languages and products
Mid-size catalogue	Free	Business €29/mo (50,000 words, 3 languages)	Standard $40/mo (2,000 products, 15 languages)
Works outside Shopify
Fixes RTL layout for you

Here's how to choose:

• Translate & Adapt is free and covers a single Arabic market well. It added Arabic auto-translation in 2024.
• Weglot suits brands that also run a non-Shopify site. Its word-based pricing gets expensive for big catalogues.
• LangShop is the cheapest way to run many languages on a catalogue of up to a few thousand products.

None of them makes your theme RTL, because that's the theme's job.

Worked example: a 300-product store

Say you sell 300 products, each with about 150 words of title, description and specs. That's roughly 45,000 words before menus and pages.

On Weglot, that fits the Business plan at €29 a month, as long as your menus and pages stay small. LangShop's Basic plan stops at 250 products, so you'd need Standard at $40.

Translate & Adapt costs nothing. So unless you need a feature it lacks, start there and spend the savings on a native reviewer.

Step 3: Translate the checkout and notifications

This is the step most stores miss. Shopify pre-translates its checkout into 33 languages, and Arabic isn't on the list.

So after you add Arabic, the checkout layout flips right to left, but some buttons and messages can stay in English. Shopify's October 2026 update handles the direction, but the words are still yours.

1

Open Translate & Adapt

Choose Arabic as the target language and start with the theme's checkout and system texts.

2

Translate every checkout string

Cover button labels, field labels, error messages, shipping and payment method names, and the order status page.

3

Translate notifications

Order confirmation, shipping updates, refund and abandoned-checkout emails and SMS all need Arabic versions.

4

Translate your policies

Refund, shipping, privacy and terms pages must read naturally in Arabic. Shoppers check these before paying by card or COD.

5

Place a test order in Arabic

Go from product page to thank-you page on a phone, with every payment method you offer. Fix any English that slips through.

Step 4: Choose Arabic fonts

Shopify themes come with Latin fonts. If you don't set an Arabic font, the browser picks a random system one, and your store looks unfinished.

These four free fonts are safe picks, and our Arabic web fonts guide covers more:

A few rules keep Arabic text looking right:

• No letter-spacing. Tracking breaks the joins between Arabic letters. Reset it on buttons and uppercase labels.
• More line height. Arabic needs about 1.6–1.8 for body text, or diacritics get clipped.
• No fake italics or uppercase. Arabic has neither. Use weight or colour for emphasis.
• Load fewer weights. Self-host WOFF2 files and load two or three weights for speed.

Step 5: Use Western numerals

Arabic has two common digit systems: Western (1, 2, 3) and Arabic-Indic (١، ٢، ٣). For prices, sizes, phone numbers and order IDs, use Western digits.

Here's why. Shoppers type Western digits into search and forms, and the big regional marketplaces show them.

The catch is technical. Software set to the "ar-SA" locale shows Arabic-Indic digits by default. Custom apps and theme scripts often switch Saudi prices to ١٬٢٩٩ by accident.

So check every price on your Arabic pages, including in app widgets. Whatever you choose, never mix the two systems on one page.

If you have a developer, ask them to use the "ar-SA-u-nu-latn" locale, which forces Western digits. Our Arabic numerals guide shows the code.

Step 6: Mirror the layout

In RTL, the whole page flows from right to left. But not everything should flip.

Never flip product photos. Text on the packaging would read backwards.

Need the CSS side of this, from logical properties to mixed-direction text? Read our RTL design guide.

Step 7: Write product copy in Gulf-friendly Arabic

Arabic is written in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) but spoken in dialect. Good Gulf stores use both, in the right places.

Translate meaning, not words: this is called transcreation.

For example, "Perfect for summer" shouldn't become a literal Arabic phrase. For a Gulf buyer, it's about heat, humidity and air-conditioned offices.

A good Arabic product title starts with the noun shoppers search, then adds the key detail:

عطر عود رجالي فاخر 100 مل – ثبات يدوم طويلاً

Watch gender, too. Arabic verbs and adjectives change for men and women, so address women directly in women's categories. Wrong gender is the most common machine-translation giveaway.

Want a full template with a specs table and FAQ block? See our guide to Arabic product descriptions.

Step 8: Price in SAR and AED, VAT included

Gulf shoppers expect local currency with VAT already in the price. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it's also the law.

Saudi VAT is 15% and UAE VAT is 5%. The price on the product page must be the price at checkout, plus shipping and nothing else.

So turn on tax-inclusive pricing in Settings > Taxes and duties. Then set your currency format so prices read cleanly in Arabic.

Don't convert your home prices literally, either. A USD 19.99 product becomes SAR 74.96, which looks odd. Round it to SAR 79 or SAR 75.

Try it with your own price:

The tool adds each country's VAT and rounds to local price points.

A few formatting details matter:

• Saudi riyal sign. The new sign goes to the left of the number with a space, in every language. Many fonts can't show it yet, so use "SAR" or "ر.س" until they do.
• AED. Write "AED 99" in English. "99 د.إ" is common in Arabic.
• Say it plainly. Add "الأسعار شاملة الضريبة" (prices include VAT) near the price or in the cart.

Our SAR and AED pricing guide has the full display rules and the price points that sell.

Step 9: Set up Markets and Arabic URLs

Shopify Markets lets each country get its own currency, language and URL. Create markets such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Rest of GCC.

Use subfolders like /ar-sa, /en-sa, /ar-ae and /en-ae. They keep your domain's SEO strength, and Shopify adds hreflang tags automatically.

Then translate meta titles, descriptions and image alt text, so each Arabic page can rank on its own.

For the setup screens, see Shopify Markets for the GCC. For rankings, see Arabic SEO for Shopify.

Test your Arabic store before you launch

Run through this list on a real iPhone and a real Android phone, in Arabic.

The final item is the one people skip. A native reviewer catches awkward phrasing, wrong gender and dialect slips that no checklist can. If there's nobody on your team, an Arabic translation agency can review the store for you.

Notes for Saudi stores

• Payments. Shopify Payments isn't available in Saudi Arabia, so you'll need a local gateway for mada and Apple Pay. Our mada on Shopify guide covers the options.
• Hijri dates for campaigns. Saudi shoppers recognise Hijri dates, so show them on Ramadan and Eid pages (رمضان 1448 هـ). Our Hijri dates guide explains how.
• Trust details. Show your CR or VAT number, a local WhatsApp number and city-level delivery times.

Notes for UAE stores

• One language per URL. Run /en-ae and /ar-ae side by side, rather than mixing both languages on one page.
• Arabic is required for some. UAE-registered online businesses must give Arabic product information and Arabic invoices.
• Shopify Payments works here. With a UAE licence, you can charge Saudi shoppers in SAR through Markets, with a 2% conversion fee.
• Copy can be more international. The UAE audience is more multinational, but keep Arabic headlines in Gulf dialect.

Notes for brands moving from Salla or Zid

• Expect more setup. Salla and Zid are Arabic-first. On Shopify, you choose the RTL theme and translate the checkout yourself.
• Move your Arabic content. Export Arabic titles, descriptions and URLs, so you don't start from scratch or lose rankings.
• Plan redirects. Map old Arabic URLs to the new /ar-sa pages before launch. Our Salla to Shopify migration guide walks through it.

Notes for overseas and Chinese brands

• Don't machine-translate from Chinese or English and stop there. Have Gulf natives rewrite the top products, banners and ads.
• Check product images. Use modest styling for models and avoid alcohol or pork in lifestyle shots. This keeps one image set working for both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• Price locally. Set fixed SAR and AED price lists instead of live conversion. Both currencies are pegged to the US dollar.