How Ijjad rebuilt a Jeddah e-commerce store that went from near-zero sales to 200+ monthly orders. Mada integration, Arabic UX, 340% conversion rate increase.
Project Snapshot
A Jeddah retailer with a healthy in-store business launched their first online store through a local agency — and watched it generate fewer than ten orders a month for half a year. They were about to write off e-commerce entirely. Then they brought in Ijjad. Six months later, the same business was processing 200+ monthly orders, with a conversion rate up 340% and mobile load times dropping from 4.2 seconds to 1.1. Here's exactly what changed — and what every Saudi e-commerce business can learn from it.
The Challenge: A Store That Looked Live But Wasn't Selling
The original WooCommerce build had every classic problem of a bargain Saudi e-commerce site:
- 4.2-second mobile load time. Saudi mobile shoppers abandon at 3 seconds. The store was effectively invisible to most of its potential customers.
- Broken Arabic layout. The RTL version was a mirrored-but-broken copy of the English site — text alignment issues, navigation in the wrong place, checkout fields out of order.
- No Mada integration. The store accepted only international credit cards. Most Saudi customers prefer Mada debit; without it, they bounced.
- Zero SEO foundation. Product pages had no schema, generic meta tags, no internal linking, and ranked for nothing.
- Fewer than 10 orders/month after 6 months live. The owner was budgeting to shut the store down.
The lesson here is the one we see most often with Saudi e-commerce: a bad WooCommerce build is worse than no online store at all, because it costs money to run, ties up the brand, and shapes the team's belief that "e-commerce doesn't work for us."
Old Stack vs Ijjad Rebuild — Side by Side
| What we measured | Old WooCommerce store | Ijjad Next.js rebuild |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile load time | 4.2 s | 1.1 s |
| PageSpeed Mobile | 35 | 92 |
| Arabic UX | Mirrored / broken | Native RTL, designed-first |
| Saudi payments | Credit card only | Mada · STC Pay · Apple Pay · Tabby |
| Product schema | None | Full Product + Offer schema |
| Monthly orders | ~10 | 200+ |
| Mobile share of revenue | Negligible | 73% of all orders |
The Solution: A Five-Move Rebuild
We didn't patch the existing store. We rebuilt it from scratch on Next.js, with a fundamentally different architecture and a completely different relationship to the Saudi customer.
1. Arabic-First Mobile Experience
Instead of designing the English site and reversing it for Arabic, we designed the entire store Arabic-first. Navigation flows right-to-left naturally. Filters, breadcrumbs, product descriptions, and the entire checkout were built around Arabic reading patterns. The English version was then derived from the Arabic layout. The customer-facing impact: Saudi shoppers stopped feeling like they were on a translated foreign site.
2. Saudi Payment Integration
We integrated Mada (debit), STC Pay (mobile wallet), Apple Pay, and Tabby (BNPL). This single change was the biggest conversion driver in the project. When Saudi customers can pay with the wallet they already use, checkout completion goes vertical. The Saudi Central Bank publishes Mada scheme information at sama.gov.sa — every serious Saudi e-commerce site should support it.
3. Performance Engineering
The new architecture uses Next.js server-side rendering, edge caching, and aggressive image optimisation. The result: mobile load time dropped from 4.2 s to 1.1 s, and Google PageSpeed mobile went from 35 to 92. On Saudi mobile networks — especially in suburban Jeddah and the rural reach — this is the difference between a sale and a bounce.
4. Product-Level SEO Built In
Every product page ships with bilingual Arabic and English meta tags, full Product + Offer schema (price, availability, reviews), clean URL slugs, and internal linking to related products and category pages. We targeted long-tail Arabic product keywords that the old site and most competitors were ignoring entirely.
5. Catalogue Restructured Around Customer Search Behaviour
We restructured the catalogue based on how Saudi customers actually search and browse — not how the inventory system happened to be organised. Category pages were rebuilt as proper landing pages with unique copy, not just product grids. This is one of those changes that sounds small and pays for itself permanently.
If your store is in this exact spot — built fast, looking fine, but generating almost no orders — fixing it the right way is usually faster and cheaper than starting over a third time. See how Ijjad approaches Saudi e-commerce builds.
The Conversion Funnel: Where the 340% Lift Came From
The 340% conversion increase wasn't one big change — it was small wins compounding at every stage of the funnel:
The Results — Six Months In
Project Timeline
| Week | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Audit, Arabic UX research, architecture planning |
| Weeks 2–3 | Arabic-first UI design and component library build-out |
| Weeks 4–5 | Payment gateway integration (Mada, STC Pay, Apple Pay, Tabby) |
| Week 6 | SEO setup, product data migration, QA testing |
| Week 7 | Launch, analytics, monitoring |
| Months 2–6 | Ongoing SEO, conversion optimisation, scaling to 200+ orders/month |
Our online store went from barely making sales to processing 200+ orders per month after Ijjad rebuilt it. The Arabic storefront, Mada integration, and mobile experience are exactly what our customers wanted.
— Layla M., E-Commerce Manager, Jeddah · Ijjad client
What This Project Says About Selling Online in Saudi Arabia
This rebuild matters not because it's exotic, but because it's repeatable. The patterns that took this client from 10 orders a month to 200+ are the same patterns that work for almost every Saudi e-commerce brand:
- Arabic UX is not a checkbox. It's a discipline. Customers can feel the difference between "designed for Arabic" and "translated to Arabic" instantly.
- Speed is the silent conversion killer. Every additional second of load time disproportionately hurts mobile sales — and Saudi e-commerce is mobile-first.
- Mada and STC Pay are not optional. If a customer can't pay with the wallet in their pocket, you didn't actually build a Saudi store.
- Product schema and long-tail Arabic SEO are huge unlocks — and almost no one in the local market is doing them properly.
- The right rebuild beats the right band-aid every time. If your store is fundamentally broken, fixing the foundation is cheaper than five years of patches.
From understanding to selling
You now know exactly what it takes to turn a non-performing Saudi e-commerce store into one that processes 200+ monthly orders. The question is whether you want to spend a year experimenting on your own — or work with a team that has shipped this exact transformation in production.
Talk to Ijjad about your storeFAQ
How did Ijjad achieve 200+ monthly orders for this client?
Four compounding factors: (1) a fast, mobile-optimised store rebuilt on Next.js (PageSpeed 92 on mobile), (2) native Arabic UX with proper RTL design that felt natural to Saudi shoppers instead of like a translated site, (3) Mada, STC Pay, Apple Pay, and Tabby integration removing every payment friction point, and (4) built-in product-level SEO that quietly pulled organic Arabic traffic from Google. No single factor did it alone — it was the combination compounding month over month.
How much does an e-commerce store like this cost?
A similar store with bilingual Arabic/English UX, Mada/STC Pay integration, and built-in SEO starts from 20,000 SAR (~$5,400) at Ijjad. More complex stores with custom configurators, ERP integration, or multi-warehouse logistics range from 40,000 to 80,000 SAR. ROI on this kind of investment is typically recovered within 3–6 months of consistent sales — and after that, the store is a pure profit channel.
Can Ijjad replicate these results for my business?
Results vary by industry, product, and how competitive your market is. But the principles that drove this success — fast mobile experience, native Arabic UX, Saudi payment integration, and product-level SEO — apply to virtually every Saudi e-commerce business. We start with a free consultation that gives you realistic expectations based on your actual market, not a generic sales pitch.
Why does Mada matter so much in Saudi Arabia?
Mada is the Saudi national debit card scheme — and it accounts for the vast majority of in-country card payments. International credit-card-only checkouts force most Saudi customers to either pull out a rarely-used credit card or abandon the cart entirely. Adding Mada (plus STC Pay and Apple Pay) reduces checkout abandonment dramatically because customers can pay with the cards already in their wallets. Read more on the official Mada scheme via the Saudi Central Bank
How long did the rebuild take?
Seven weeks from kick-off to launch: 1 week of audit and Arabic UX research, 2 weeks of design and component work, 2 weeks of payment integration, 1 week of SEO and migration, then 1 week of launch and monitoring. The 200+ monthly orders milestone was reached around month 6 — it took ongoing SEO and conversion optimisation work, not just the initial rebuild.
Want results like this for your online store?
Whether you're launching a new e-commerce store or rebuilding an underperforming one, Ijjad can help. We'll audit your current situation, recommend the right approach, and give you a clear quote — Saudi-aware builds start from 20,000 SAR.
Get a Free E-Commerce Consultation →Keep exploring: Ijjad E-Commerce Services · Estimate Your Cost · Saudi National Design System Case Study · Riyadh Redesign Case Study
Karam Abd Al Qader
Founder & Product Consultant at Ijjad