Hissatech
Fractional real estate, Saudi Arabia
Hissatech lets someone in Saudi Arabia own a share of an income-generating property instead of the whole building. The share is registered, the rent arrives monthly, and the investing itself happens in an app.I designed the website. Its job is everything that has to happen before the app is ever downloaded: explaining an unfamiliar financial product, establishing that it is real and regulated, and making an abstract instrument feel as concrete as a title deed.
Case study
The problem
The site has to earn a download before the product can earn a customer
Real estate in Saudi Arabia is understood physically. You see the building, you hold the deed, you know the street. Fractional ownership breaks all three: you buy 1% of a property you will never visit, and what you own is a certificate rather than a door.
That is the site's whole problem. Someone arriving here has not committed anything yet, and the thing being asked of them is not small: install a financial app and put money into an instrument they have never heard of. Every section had to close part of that gap, or it did not belong on the page.
What was there before
The old site asserted trust. It did not show it.
The previous site listed opportunities and stated that the company was licensed. There was no calculator, no explanation of how a share is created, no Sharia ruling, no partners, no founders. Sixteen FAQ entries sat on the landing page in place of an argument.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Return calculator | None | On the landing page |
| How a share is created | Not explained | A page of its own |
| Sharia ruling | Not shown | Named scholar, certificate linked |
| Partners | None | Five, named |
| Founders | None | Four, with photographs |
| FAQ on landing | 16 entries | 4, with a link |
Making the abstract concrete
Show the arithmetic, do not explain the concept
The instinct with an unfamiliar financial product is to explain it. We did the opposite and showed the sum, in the plainest numbers we could find:
| Property value | SAR 10,000,000 |
| Number of shares | 10,000 |
| Price per share | SAR 1,000 |
| You invest SAR 10,000 | You own 1% of the property, and 1% of its rent |
One worked example does what three paragraphs of definition cannot. A reader who follows that division has understood fractional ownership without ever being taught the term.
The calculator
Answering the question before it is asked
Every prospective investor arrives with the same question: what do I actually get back. The honest answer lives inside the app, behind a download. The calculator brings it forward onto the landing page, before anyone has committed to anything.
It carries its own disclaimer, in plain language: the figures are estimates, they depend on the property and the rental market, and real results will differ. A calculator that overpromises does more damage than no calculator at all, especially inside a regulatory sandbox.
Trust as a design material
The credibility has to be on the page
For a product this unfamiliar, the trust signals are not decoration around the product. They are part of it, and each one is specific rather than generic:
- The Sharia ruling is named. Reviewed and approved by Sheikh Prof. Dr. Yousef bin Abdullah Al-Shubaily, with the certificate one tap away.
- The regulator is named. The REGA sandbox, stated on the home page and explained in full on the about page.
- The partners are named. Mada, Nafath, the Real Estate Authority, Arab National Bank, Lean.
- The founders are named, with photographs and real biographies.
A badge that says "secure" persuades nobody. A scholar's name, a regulator's programme, and a bank you already use are checkable, and checkable is the only kind of trust that survives a serious investor.
Arabic first
Built right to left, not flipped
The product is Arabic first and reads right to left throughout: layout, navigation, forms, numerals, and the direction of every progress sequence. The English version is the mirror, not the original.
Reflection
The calculator was the most useful thing on the page and the last thing we built. It should have been the first, because it is the only element that answers the question everyone actually arrives with.
Screenshots of the previous site are from the Internet Archive, November 2025. The live site is the design as delivered.