A bilingual English/Urdu website for a published author, with affordable Stripe-powered book sales (no Shopify subscription) and a multi-language blog.
The client
Hanif Shiwani is a published author writing in both English and Urdu. He needed a website that could sell his books online, host his writing in both languages, and rank in Google for both English and Urdu searches — without paying ongoing fees for an expensive e-commerce platform.
The problem
Most e-commerce solutions (Shopify, WooCommerce) come with monthly fees or hosting overhead that didn't make sense for an author selling a small number of books. At the same time, multi-language support is patchy on most off-the-shelf platforms — especially for right-to-left scripts like Urdu, where rendering, fonts, and SEO all need careful handling.
What we built
A custom multi-language website that works seamlessly in English and Urdu. Proper right-to-left text rendering for Urdu, language switcher in the header, separate URLs per language for SEO, and Urdu-language metadata so the site ranks for Urdu search queries.
Stripe-powered book sales instead of a full e-commerce platform. We set up Stripe Products with hosted checkout — buyers click "Buy" on a book, hit Stripe's checkout, complete payment, and get a download/confirmation. Zero monthly fees beyond Stripe's standard transaction cost. No Shopify, no WooCommerce, no subscription.
A multi-language blog so Hanif can write articles in either English or Urdu (or both), with proper language tagging for search engines.
Tech stack
Next.js, TypeScript, Stripe (Products + hosted checkout), Sanity for content management, Vercel hosting.