Over the past decade or more, Zahra Abdalla has built her reputation in the UAE as an award-winning cookbook author, food blogger, and all-around entrepreneur in the food industry. While her business opportunities have largely come from her Instagram platform of almost 200K followers, we redesigned Zahra’s website as a professional food blog that will also serve as additional credibility for media partners.
The website has been relaunched with hundreds of recipes, each with a video. Zahra has a unique style of Western Arabised recipes with Iranian influence showcasing both Muslim and Christian cultures with regional elements. The site features tips and hacks in a variety of categories from organization to entertainment which is designed to make life easier for families. Zahra would love to be thought of as “your older sister” or the “Martha Stewart of the Middle East” — someone turned to for trustworthy tips and advice. She aims to be the #1 blogger in the UAE.
The site was built with new branding, clean, simple, and modern, with a magazine-style layout to inspire visitors. The website is light, organized, easy to navigate, easy to read, fast-loading, and highly user-friendly on all devices (i.e. mobile-first/responsive design) and modern browsers. It was built with a focus on user experience, SEO, and speed. While the largest audience is in the UAE, Zahra’s site has a strong audience in the USA and UK, and internationally.
The primary call to action is for visitors to explore lots of recipes and video content. Secondary calls to action are to opt into forms, follow on social media, and engage through comments and ratings. The site is easy for Zahra and her team to update and expand over time in WordPress’s Gutenberg block editor. Particular emphasis will be placed on search engine optimization through lightweight code, minimal plugin usage, meta descriptions, and titles (via Yoast), image names, and site speed.
