In Israel, many businesses serve customers in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Putting three languages on one website sounds like a translation job. It is really a planning job, and the decisions you make before design starts are the ones that are expensive to change later.
Here is how we plan a site, or an online store, in three languages.
Which language comes first
Start with your customers, not your own habits. Look at who calls you, who buys and what they search for:
- Which language do most customers use? That is your default: the one the site opens in when nothing else is known.
- Which language do they search in? People often search in a different language from the one they speak at home.
- Which language must be perfect on day one? Sometimes all three. Sometimes two, with the third added later.
Design in your main language first, but check every screen in all three before you approve it.
One site or three?
- One site, three languages. The same pages and design, with a language switch in the header. One place to update, one admin. This suits most businesses.
- Separate sites. Different content for different audiences, like a local service in Hebrew and Arabic and an export business in English.
What to avoid is the half-way option: a full Hebrew site with an "English" page of three lines. Visitors notice what is missing.
Right to left, done properly
Hebrew and Arabic read from right to left. That changes the whole page, not only the text alignment:
- Mirror the layout. The logo and menu move to the right, image-and-text rows swap sides, carousels and steps run right to left.
- Keep numbers and prices left to right. A price like ₪1,500 or a phone number can jump around inside a Hebrew or Arabic sentence. Your developer should isolate them so they stay in one piece.
- Flip icons that point a direction. "Next" and "back" arrows and progress lines flip. Play buttons, logos, checkmarks and photos don't.
- Test mixed text. Brand names, emails and product codes in Latin letters inside Hebrew and Arabic sentences are where layouts break.
For the details, see our practical RTL checklist. Everything in it applies to Hebrew too.
Fonts that cover Hebrew and Arabic
Many popular English fonts have no Hebrew or Arabic letters. The phone then falls back to its own font, and your site looks like three different brands.
- Choose fonts with Hebrew, Arabic and Latin versions that match in weight and feel.
- Use at least a regular and a bold weight in each.
- Arabic usually needs a slightly larger size and more line height to read comfortably.
- Load only the weights you use, so the site stays fast on a phone.
Menus, buttons and forms
The same idea takes a different amount of space in each language. A short English label can be much longer in Arabic.
- Design for the longest language, with real text, not placeholder text.
- Keep labels short in every language. If a menu item needs two lines, rename it.
- Translate the whole form: labels, hints and error messages. Email and phone fields stay left to right on every page.
- Accept every alphabet. A name field that rejects Hebrew or Arabic letters loses a lead.
- Don't forget what comes after: confirmation emails, WhatsApp messages and invoices in the customer's language.
SEO: one address per language
- A separate address per language, like /he/services, /ar/services and /en/services. If the language changes with a cookie on one address, search engines usually see only one version.
- hreflang links that tell Google which pages are the same content in another language.
- Page titles and descriptions written in each language. They are what people see in Google and in WhatsApp link previews.
- All versions in the sitemap.
- Send first-time visitors to their browser's language, but let them switch, and keep them on the same page when they do.
Who writes and reviews each language
Machine translation gives you text that is almost right, and readers feel the "almost". Decide early:
- Who writes each language. Ideally a native writer who gets the goal of each page, not sentences to translate.
- Who reviews it, on the live page, not in a document.
- Who keeps the three versions in step when a price or a service changes.
A short checklist
- A default language chosen from customer data
- One site with full versions, or separate sites for a reason
- Layout mirrored, numbers and prices kept in one piece
- Fonts that cover all three scripts
- Menus and buttons designed for the longest language
- Forms, errors and emails in every language
- A separate address, hreflang and translated titles per language
- A named writer and reviewer for each language
- Tested on real phones in all three
Planning a site in more than one language?
Plan your project in one minute: four questions, and your plan builds as you answer. Or book a free 30-minute call and we'll go through your languages together. You get a fixed quote within 48 hours.
