Arabic-first commerce: what real RTL support looks like

Plenty of app builders will tell you they “support RTL.” What that usually means: the text alignment flips, and everything else breaks quietly. Chevrons point the wrong way. Numbers stay Western. The layout mirrors except for the four places it doesn’t.

We built StoreToNative with Arabic commerce as a first-class requirement from the first commit, and it taught us that real right-to-left support is a hundred small decisions, not a switch.

Layout is the easy part — direction is everywhere else

When an Arabic shopper opens a StoreToNative app, the entire experience mirrors: navigation, product grids, the checkout flow, sheets and dialogs, back gestures. The details are where it shows. A “next” chevron in an English app points right; in Arabic it must point left — so every directional icon in the storefront resolves against the text direction instead of being hardcoded. Sort and filter sheets open from the correct edge. Progress steps run the correct way.

Numerals are a decision, not a font

Prices are the most-read text in a shopping app. StoreToNative renders Arabic-Indic numerals (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩) in prices and quantities where the locale calls for them, with the currency positioned the way Arabic readers expect. If your store sells in Egyptian pounds to shoppers in Cairo, the price reads like it was written by someone who shops there — because functionally, it was.

Bilingual out of the box

Shopper-facing strings — navigation labels, cart, checkout, order status, empty states — ship in Arabic and English. Your product data comes from your WooCommerce store in whatever language you maintain it; the app’s own chrome meets it in the shopper’s language.

Why we care this much

E-commerce in the Middle East is enormous and mobile-first, and it has been served for years by tools that treat Arabic as an afterthought. We think the first impression an Arabic-speaking customer gets from your app is a competitive weapon. It’s also, frankly, an engineering standard: a codebase disciplined enough to get RTL right everywhere is disciplined about everything else too.

Your customers will notice. Start the 14-day trial and open your own catalog in Arabic.