Arabic customers expect a site that reads from right to left in every detail. Use this checklist for layout, fonts, numbers, forms, emails, invoices and SEO on WooCommerce and Odoo sites.
If your customers read Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Urdu, a website that merely right-aligns its text will feel wrong. People notice mirrored icons that point the wrong way, buttons in unexpected places, numbers that jump around inside sentences and forms that fight the direction of typing. A properly built right-to-left (RTL) site feels natural, and a natural site converts better.
This checklist is for anyone running an online store or business site on WooCommerce, Odoo or a similar platform who wants to serve right-to-left readers properly. You can use it to test a theme before you buy it, or to review your existing site.
The page itself must declare its direction and language. In HTML this means the dir="rtl" attribute and a lang value such as ar on the root element. Without them, browsers and screen readers guess, and punctuation lands on the wrong side of sentences. Check that the direction changes when the language changes, and that a page in English on the same site switches back to left-to-right.
In an RTL layout the whole interface mirrors:
Not everything mirrors. Play and pause buttons, media timelines, phone keypad numbers, clocks and most logos keep their direction. A good RTL stylesheet knows the difference, and a theme that only flips everything blindly will break some icons.
Choose a font designed for Arabic script, with good weights for body text and headings. Arabic needs more line height than Latin text, so give paragraphs room to breathe. Avoid letter-spacing on Arabic: it breaks the connected letters. Check that your font includes every character you use, including the Arabic punctuation marks, and that it loads quickly: a heavy font file can slow down every page.
Decide on the digits your audience expects. Many Arabic-language sites use Western digits (0 to 9) for prices and phone numbers, while others prefer Eastern Arabic-Indic digits. Whichever you choose, apply it everywhere and test with real data.
Prices mix script and numbers: "149.00 SAR" inside an Arabic sentence can reorder itself. Wrap amounts so they stay together as one unit, and check that currency symbols appear on the correct side. Test dates as well, including the calendar your customers expect.
Text fields should align to the start of the line in the user's language. But some fields always hold left-to-right content: email addresses, URLs, phone numbers and order numbers. Set those fields to left-to-right so that typing feels right. Check validation messages, placeholder text and the position of icons inside fields.
Customers do not only see your website. Check the order confirmation email, the invoice PDF, shipping labels and password reset messages in Arabic. PDFs are the usual weak point: the generator needs a font with Arabic glyphs and support for connecting and reordering letters. If you run Odoo, check that your invoice and quotation templates render Arabic correctly and that the company name and address print on the right side.
An Arabic page should be its own page: translated title, description and headings, a clear URL and hreflang links that connect it to the other language versions. Do not show Arabic chrome around English text and expect it to rank. If a translation does not exist yet, keep the page in the default language and do not claim otherwise. Make sure product names and categories are searchable in Arabic.
Open the site on an Arabic phone and walk the whole journey: find a product, add it to the basket, check out and read the confirmation email. Have a native speaker read the pages: machine translation often reads awkwardly. Watch for text that overflows its buttons, since Arabic words can be longer or shorter than the English ones.
| Area | Check |
|---|---|
| Direction | dir and lang set and switching correctly |
| Layout | Menus, sidebars, arrows and steps mirrored |
| Fonts | Arabic font, generous line height, no letter-spacing |
| Numbers | One consistent digit style; prices stay together |
| Forms | Email and phone fields stay left-to-right |
| Documents | Emails and PDFs render Arabic properly |
| SEO | Translated pages with hreflang, not mixed language |
If you are choosing a theme, look in the listing for a full RTL stylesheet and translation files. For example, the FreshBasket grocery theme states that it includes a full RTL stylesheet. Before you buy any theme, test it as described in our guide on testing a WooCommerce theme, switching the site to Arabic on the staging copy. If you also run Odoo, see our advice on choosing Odoo modules and look for ones that ship Arabic translations.
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