Workshop strives to reduce the digital gap in the Arab world

Divakaran Liginlal, teaching professor of information systems, led a workshop titled “Content Strategies for Arabic Ecommerce Websites,” which included the findings of an NPRP research study of over 3000 Arabic e-commerce websites.

Liginlal and research collaborators Rizwan Ahmad and Robert Meeds of Qatar University, Yasir Suleiman of Cambridge University, Kassim Shaaban of American University of Beirut, and Alex Cheek of CMU-Q, spoke to an audience of content strategists and web designers from 14 organizations in Qatar. The workshop stressed the importance of speaking to the customer in Arabic with culturally-relevant content, and developing visual imagery and interface icons that appeal to the Arab eye.