Arabic and Urdu Shopify Stores for Indian Brands in the Gulf

Indian D2C brands selling to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf have mostly sold in English. On 2 October 2026, Shopify improved support for three right-to-left languages, Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew, across the admin, storefronts, checkout, customer accounts and its Horizon themes. That makes an Arabic storefront far more practical than it was. This guide explains what changed, what you still have to do yourself, and whether an Arabic version of your store is worth it for an Indian brand.

Feature details are from Shopify's changelog of 2 October 2026, checked on 5 October 2026. Shopify features roll out gradually, so check your own admin under Settings, then Languages.

What did Shopify change for Arabic and Urdu?

According to Shopify's announcement, it released "improved support for 3 right-to-left languages (Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew) in both Admin and Storefronts, including checkout, customer accounts and the Horizon family of themes."

Right-to-left support is more than translation. Arabic and Urdu read from right to left, so the whole layout has to mirror: menus, product galleries, prices, form fields and buttons. When a store is not built for that, an Arabic page looks broken even if every word is correct. Shopify handling this in checkout and customer accounts matters most, because those are the pages a store owner cannot fully control.

Two details from the announcement are important:

• Shopify's own interface language follows the device. Display language for these parts is "determined based on the user's device settings, if available."
• Your content stays in the languages you enable. "Product pages and other merchant-owned content will continue to be displayed in the languages that you have enabled." Shopify points to its Translate and Adapt app for translating product pages.

What do you still have to do yourself?

Shopify now handles the frame. You handle the content and the theme. For an Arabic storefront that means:

1. Add the language. In Settings, then Languages, add Arabic and publish it when ready.
2. Translate your content. Product titles and descriptions, collections, pages, menus, policies and notifications. Translate and Adapt can do this, including machine translation, but a native speaker should review anything customers read before buying.
3. Check your theme. The announcement names the Horizon family of themes. If your store runs on another theme, especially a heavily customised or third-party one, test every template in Arabic. Custom sections often have left-to-right assumptions built into their code.
4. Check your apps. Review widgets, pop-ups, WhatsApp buttons and upsell blocks all need to display correctly in right-to-left. Some will, some will not.
5. Translate images with text. Banners with English text baked into the image will not translate. Use live text over images where you can.

Is an Arabic store worth it for an Indian brand?

It depends on who is buying. Many Gulf shoppers, including the large Indian community there, are comfortable buying in English, and an English store already works for them. Arabic is worth adding when you want to reach Arabic-speaking customers beyond that, especially for categories where trust and detail matter, such as beauty, fragrance, food and modest fashion.

Questions to answer before you invest:

• Do you already sell to the Gulf? Look at your orders by country. If the UAE or Saudi Arabia is already a meaningful market, Arabic can grow it. If you sell almost nothing there yet, shipping, duties and delivery times are bigger problems to solve first.
• Can you support customers in Arabic? An Arabic storefront invites Arabic messages. If nobody can reply in Arabic, the experience breaks at the first question.
• Will you advertise in Arabic? Arabic pages earn their keep when Arabic ads and search send people to them.
• Do your products need changes? Labelling, sizes, ingredients and regulatory requirements can differ by country.

Our guide to cross-border selling from India with Shopify Markets covers pricing, currencies and duties for international markets, which come before language in most cases.

What about Urdu?

Urdu is the other right-to-left language in this update with a clear Indian connection. It is widely read in parts of India and across the region, and some categories, such as books, attar and fragrance, modest fashion and food, have buyers who would value an Urdu option. As with Arabic, the deciding factor is whether you can translate well, support customers in the language and bring traffic to those pages. Shopify's update means the checkout and account pages will now display properly. It does not write the product pages for you.

How should you set up Arabic with Shopify Markets?

Language and market are separate settings, and they work best together. A typical setup for an Indian brand selling to the UAE:

Payment is often the hardest part for India-based stores, because Shopify Payments is not available in India and international payments run through your third-party provider. Check with your provider which currencies and international cards they support before promising local-currency prices. Our Razorpay and Cashfree guide covers the Indian gateways.

What does a good right-to-left product page need?

More than mirrored text. These are the details that separate a page that feels native from one that feels translated:

• Mirrored direction cues. Arrows, carousels, breadcrumbs and progress indicators should point the right way. A "next" arrow pointing left-to-right on an Arabic page is a small but constant signal that the store was not built for the reader.
• Numbers and prices. Decide how prices, sizes and quantities display, and keep it consistent across product pages, cart and checkout.
• Fonts that support the script. Many brand fonts have no Arabic characters, so the browser falls back to a default that clashes with the design. Choose an Arabic font that pairs with your brand font.
• Space for longer or shorter text. Translated text changes length. Buttons, badges and menu items need room to grow or shrink without breaking the layout.
• Mixed content handled cleanly. Product names, SKUs and English brand names inside Arabic sentences need to sit correctly, which is a common place for layouts to break.

What about customer service and messages in Arabic?

The store is only half the experience. Order confirmation, shipping and delivery messages, return instructions and any WhatsApp templates should be available in Arabic too, or a customer who bought in Arabic suddenly receives English at the moment they need reassurance. Shopify's notifications can be translated along with your store content, but WhatsApp and SMS tools are set up separately, so check each one. Translate your returns and shipping policies as well, since Gulf buyers ordering from India will want clear answers on delivery times, duties and how returns work across borders.

How do Arabic pages affect search?

Positively, if they are set up properly. When you publish a language on its own URLs, each Arabic page becomes a separate page that search engines can show to Arabic searchers, rather than a translation hidden behind a switcher. Shopify Markets publishes language versions on their own subfolders, which is what makes this possible.

Two things to do on top. First, translate page titles and meta descriptions, not just the visible content, because they are what appears in search results. Second, do not translate keywords word for word. People in the Gulf may search for a product using different terms from a literal translation of your English title, so have a native speaker check what buyers actually type. Our international expansion guide covers the wider setup for selling abroad from Shopify.

How do you test an Arabic storefront before launch?

1. Switch to Arabic and walk every template on a phone: home, collection, product, cart and any landing pages.
2. Check that prices, sizes and quantities display correctly in right-to-left layout.
3. Place a test order in Arabic, from the product page through checkout to the confirmation email.
4. Check customer account pages and order notifications in Arabic.
5. Have a native Arabic speaker read every customer-facing page, not just the translations tool's output.
6. Confirm search engines can find the Arabic pages through their own URLs.

Thinking about an Arabic or Gulf storefront?

Free Gulf readiness check. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "Arabic storefront" and your store URL. Tell us your theme, the apps you use and which Gulf countries you sell to. We reply within 4 hours with whether your theme will work in right-to-left, what needs fixing, and whether Arabic or better international shipping and pricing should come first.

If you go ahead. We set up Markets, languages and right-to-left fixes for custom sections, and test the full Arabic journey before it goes live.