Why Arabic-first RTL matters for your online store
Arabic-first RTL design, bilingual products and checkout, and Cairo typography — practical reasons they affect conversion in Arab markets.
Treating Arabic as a translated afterthought costs sales. In Mrfqy's home markets, most customers read product details in Arabic, share links in WhatsApp RTL bubbles, and abandon carts when checkout labels flip to awkward English-only errors. Arabic-first means layout, typography, and default content direction are designed for RTL from the database up — English is additive, not primary.
RTL is layout, not just text direction
True RTL mirrors navigation, icons, and form field order. A cart icon should sit where Arabic readers expect it; discount badges should not collide with product titles when strings run longer in Arabic.
International templates bolted onto LTR frameworks often break on mobile: truncated headlines, overlapping prices, misaligned payment icons. Mrfqy components are authored RTL-first, then mirrored for English.
Test your store with longest realistic Arabic product names — if layout survives, English will look fine automatically.
Bilingual product and collection content
Mrfqy stores separate Arabic and English fields for titles, descriptions, SEO slugs, and variant labels. Fill Arabic first with the words your customers actually search — colloquial terms for fashion, formal terms for B2B supplies.
English helps expat buyers, export inquiries, and Instagram audiences that mix languages. Empty English fields fall back gracefully to Arabic rather than showing blank pages.
Use AI-assisted copy generation as a draft, then have a native speaker edit tone. Machine Arabic in luxury categories erodes trust quickly.