la7ma.com - Egypt's First Online Fresh Meat E-Commerce
Khaled led the development of la7ma.com, Egypt's first e-commerce platform for selling fresh meat online. Built on Shopify with custom Liquid plugins, the platform features RTL Arabic support, bilingual interface, and an innovative interactive meat cuts display designed to build trust with a 30-35+ demographic who traditionally buy from local butchers. The project capitalized on the post-COVID e-commerce boom in Egypt.
Problem Solved
Egyptian consumers, particularly mothers aged 30-35+, trusted their local butchers for meat purchases but lacked a digital alternative. Convincing this demographic to buy meat online required building visual trust through detailed product presentation and familiar shopping patterns.
- •Architected Shopify-based e-commerce platform with extensive customization
- •Developed custom Liquid plugins for RTL Arabic support
- •Designed bilingual (Arabic/English) interface with proper RTL layout
- •Created interactive meat cuts visualization for trust-building
- •Implemented custom order capabilities for specific cuts
- •Led ORKA Solutions team through 4-month delivery
- ✓Launched Egypt's first fresh meat e-commerce platform (first-to-market)
- ✓Successfully targeted 30-35+ demographic who traditionally buy from local butchers
- ✓Implemented full RTL Arabic support with bilingual (Arabic/English) interface
- ✓Created interactive meat cuts display building visual trust with customers
- ✓Enabled custom order capabilities for specific cuts and preferences
- ✓Capitalized on post-COVID e-commerce boom in Egypt
Scale
- • First-to-market in vertical
- • Full Arabic RTL support
- • Custom ordering capability
Technology Stack
Challenge
Target demographic (30-35+ mothers) traditionally trusts local butchers with personal relationships - convincing them to buy meat online required building visual trust
Solution
Designed interactive meat cuts display showing high-quality imagery of each cut, clear weight options, and transparent pricing similar to in-person butcher experience
Impact
Built sufficient trust for conservative demographic to transition online meat purchasing
Challenge
Shopify's default themes are not optimized for Arabic RTL (right-to-left) layouts, causing broken layouts and poor reading experience
Solution
Developed custom Liquid plugins and extensive CSS modifications for proper RTL rendering across all pages
Impact
Delivered native-quality Arabic experience that felt natural to Egyptian users
Challenge
Fresh meat e-commerce did not exist in Egypt - no established patterns for online meat shopping UX
Solution
Researched traditional butcher shop interactions and translated familiar patterns to digital format with custom order forms mimicking in-person ordering
Impact
Created UX that felt familiar to target demographic despite being completely new
Situation
Post-COVID Egypt experienced a significant e-commerce boom, with vendors and distributors seeking digital transformation. However, fresh meat remained an untouched vertical - Egyptian mothers aged 30-35+ had long-standing relationships with local butchers and significant distrust of buying meat online. la7ma.com saw an opportunity to be first-to-market in this space.
Task
As Technical Lead at ORKA Solutions, Khaled was responsible for building an e-commerce platform that would convince a conservative demographic to trust buying fresh meat online - a significant behavioral shift requiring thoughtful UX design alongside technical implementation.
Action
Khaled architected the platform on Shopify with extensive customization. The biggest technical challenge was proper RTL Arabic support, which required custom Liquid plugins and CSS modifications since Shopify's default themes broke in RTL layouts. More importantly, he designed an interactive meat cuts display that visually showcased each product with the detail and transparency of a butcher shop visit. Custom order forms allowed customers to specify exact cuts as they would in person. The bilingual Arabic/English interface ensured accessibility for all Egyptian users.
Result
la7ma.com launched as Egypt's first fresh meat e-commerce platform, successfully capturing first-mover advantage in an untouched vertical. The trust-building UX design successfully converted the target demographic of traditional butcher shop customers to online ordering. The project demonstrated ORKA Solutions' capability to solve unique UX challenges for conservative demographics.
Technical
- • Shopify theme customization and Liquid templating
- • RTL (right-to-left) localization for Arabic
- • Bilingual e-commerce implementation
- • Custom product visualization for trust-building
Soft Skills
- • Understanding conservative demographic UX needs
- • First-to-market product strategy
- • Translating traditional experiences to digital
Key Insights
- 💡 Trust is the primary barrier in new e-commerce verticals, especially for fresh products
- 💡 RTL implementation requires ground-up thinking, not just CSS mirroring
- 💡 First-to-market opportunities come from solving UX problems for underserved demographics