Shopify agency for Dubai & the UAE
We build and run Shopify stores for UAE brands — bilingual Arabic and English, Tabby and Tamara at checkout, AED pricing with 5% VAT handled correctly, and a calendar built around Ramadan and White Friday rather than Black Friday.
Brands we build and scale
A UAE store that is just an English store with AED prices will underperform.
Arabic is not a translation layer. It is a right-to-left layout, which means the entire theme — navigation, product grids, cart drawer, form fields, icons with directional meaning — has to mirror properly. Themes that were never tested in RTL break in ways that are obvious to an Arabic-speaking customer and invisible to everyone else. We build and test both directions.
Buy-now-pay-later is close to table stakes here. Tabby and Tamara carry a meaningful share of UAE checkouts, and a store without them is asking a segment of its customers to go elsewhere. Cash on delivery still matters too, more than most Western agencies expect.
And the retail calendar is different. Ramadan and Eid drive the year's biggest spikes, White Friday replaces Black Friday, and DSF sets the January rhythm. A store scaled for a November peak is scaled for the wrong month.
Brands we build and run in the Emirates
A selection of the UAE stores we have built or manage. Go and look at them — that is the point of listing them.
Lambent
Home fragrance and lifestyle brand. Shopify storefront build and ongoing development. lambent.ae
HThreads
Dubai abaya and modest-wear label. Bilingual storefront with the merchandising this category needs. hthreads.ae
NBARS
Vegan, all-natural snack bars. Shopify build with subscription-ready product structure. nbars.ae
Tres Marias Coffee
Speciality coffee roaster. Storefront and recurring-order setup for a category that lives on repeat purchase. tresmariascoffee.com
The Design House Dubai
Interiors and design brand — store revamp plus SEO and Meta and Google Ads management. Full case study on our site.
Alza Jewels
UAE fine jewellery. Trust-first storefront for a high-consideration, high-value category. alza-jewels.ae
EduSpark Toys
Educational toys for the UAE market, with the age and category filtering this vertical depends on. edusparktoys.ae
Antarria
Lifestyle brand storefront built and supported by our team. antarria.com
Shopify services for UAE brands
Arabic RTL storefronts
Full right-to-left theme builds, not a translation plugin over an LTR layout. Every component tested in both directions.
GCC payments & BNPL
Tabby, Tamara, Network International, Telr and Shopify Payments, with COD configured the way UAE customers expect it.
Multi-market GCC
Shopify Markets for UAE, Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman — currency, pricing and shipping per market.
Google & Meta Ads
Performance marketing for a market with high purchasing power, high CPMs, and a completely different seasonal calendar.
Migration to Shopify
Moving from Magento, WooCommerce or a custom build without losing Arabic content or search rankings.
Shopify Plus
Enterprise builds for regional groups — multi-store, multi-currency and B2B across the GCC.
Questions we get every week
Can you build a proper Arabic store, not just a translation?
Yes, and the distinction matters. A real Arabic storefront is right-to-left throughout: navigation, product grids, cart drawer, forms, and any icon whose direction carries meaning all have to mirror. Many themes were never tested in RTL and break in ways an Arabic-speaking customer notices immediately. We build and QA both directions, and we treat the Arabic experience as a first-class storefront rather than a translated copy of the English one.
Do you integrate Tabby and Tamara?
Yes. Both are close to expected at UAE checkout now, and stores without BNPL lose a real share of orders. We also set up Network International, Telr and Shopify Payments as appropriate, and configure cash on delivery — which still carries meaningful volume in the GCC even as card and BNPL grow.
How do you handle UAE VAT?
5% VAT is configured at the tax level with compliant invoicing, including the tax registration number display the FTA requires. If you sell across multiple GCC markets we set up per-market tax handling through Shopify Markets rather than a single flat rate, since the rules differ by country.
Do you work in UAE business hours?
Yes. Our team is in India, which overlaps fully with UAE business hours — there is only a 1.5 hour difference. In practice you get same-day responses on working days, which is not always true of agencies serving the region from Europe or North America.
Should we plan around Black Friday or White Friday?
White Friday, and more importantly Ramadan and Eid. Ramadan drives the largest sustained spike in most UAE categories, with buying patterns that shift dramatically toward late-night hours. Dubai Shopping Festival sets the January rhythm. We plan store scaling, campaign calendars and inventory around that calendar rather than the American one.
Can you handle a multi-country GCC rollout?
Yes, through Shopify Markets — separate currency, pricing, tax and shipping configuration for UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, from one admin. For larger groups we architect this on Shopify Plus with expansion stores where the markets genuinely need separate catalogues.
Explore next
Free audit for your UAE store
Send us your store URL. We will come back with a written audit — speed, technical SEO, RTL and Arabic issues, and where your payment and checkout setup is losing GCC orders.