“Our goal is to help small businesses become better at what they do. We provide them with responsive websites and mobile sites that help them connect and engage with their customers.”

Itai Sadan founded Duda to help small businesses connect with potential customers anywhere, anytime and anyplace. Itai started the company from his garage in Mountain View, CA, with his high school friend, Amir Glatt, who is now CTO. In 2008 they both noticed how the Internet was shifting towards mobile and the need for small businesses to create mobile optimized sites to attract customers on the go.

Duda provides small businesses with a simple and affordable way to create a website that works on desktop, tablet and mobile. With its award-winning one-­click conversion technology, Duda makes it easy to convert any desktop website into one that’s optimized for all devices in mere minutes.

BusinessInterviews.com: How are you helping improve the websites of small businesses around the world?

Itai: Our goal is to help small businesses become better at what they do. We provide them with responsive websites and mobile sites that help them connect and engage with their customers. Just last month we generated over one million calls to small businesses on our platform. We do this with a widget called click-to-call that business owners can place on their mobile site. We also generated over 400K clicks-to-maps, which is a map that opens and shows people the direction to a business they are looking for.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you expand on the differences between DudaOne and DudaMobile and how they have been designed to meet two unique needs?

Itai: DudaMobile is a mobile only site builder. It’s great for businesses who have a website that they are happy with and want to add a mobile version to that website. DudaOne is a responsive website builder, it enables building a new website that is optimized for desktop, tablet and mobile.

BusinessInterviews.com: Congratulations on your recent 5-year anniversary. When reflecting over the past few years, which milestone has felt the most meaningful to you?

Itai: I love most of all connecting with real small businesses in a meaningful and genuine way that feels like we are making a difference in the world. There last time we did that was back in March when we took the Duda team and headed to Buda Texas where we built 50 sites for 50 small businesses in just 3 days. It was an amazing experience and we loved every minute of it.

BusinessInterviews.com: What’s the biggest risk that you’ve ever taken and how did it turn out?

Itai: In the early days of mobile it wasn’t clear who would win the mobile web or mobile apps. This discussion actually continues on today. We chose to strictly focus on the web and not get into the mobile app space. We felt that although apps are cool, they won’t deliver real ROI to the small business. No one is going to search for small businesses in the app store; no one will download and use those apps. We believed that people would continue searching for small businesses on Google or through other apps like Yelp. Nonetheless it was a big bet, as a whole eco-system developed around apps and there was a big buzz around them. I do believe apps are great in some cases, for example bigger companies who have a large and engaged user base. But for our type of customer it didn’t make sense. It was a strategic decision we made four years ago and I still believe it is the right one until today.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some trends in the mobile space that you’re excited about or think that our readers should be paying attention to?

Itai: I think a big trend is multi-screen. Think of all the different devices that are getting connected to the Internet. Our phones are obvious, but there is also GPSs in cars like the Tesla that are getting connected to the Internet, there are wearables like Google Glass that connects to the Internet. Our TV screens are connected to the Internet and have a browser in them. It is interesting to think how businesses will be discovered from all these different browsers and screens. This is something that we are thinking of a lot at Duda and see it as our mission to make sure that businesses on our platform provide the best experience for their users regardless of which device they are coming from.

BusinessInterviews.com: Duda won over 11 awards in 2013 including Small or Medium Business Service of the Year, how do you plan to keep this impressive momentum going?

Itai: Keep our focus on two things. One is continuing to improve and make the product better and two is focusing on our customers and their needs. If we do those two things well all the rest will take care of itself, including the awards.