Advernation is a web design company in New York City. We design, write and build websites for businesses that need the site to do a job: be found on Google, load at once on a phone and turn a visit into a call. We build them as SEO people first. The design starts from what your customers search for, and the calls to action and the text go where they need to be.
Advernation was started on New Year’s Eve 2007 in Flushing, Queens, by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and has been in Manhattan since 2016. A tradesman judges a website the way he judges a tool: by whether it does the work. That is how we judge ours.
Want to know what is holding your present site back? Ask for the free website audit, or call us about a new one.
What you get
- A design made for your business. Not a bought theme with your logo dropped in.
- Every page planned for one search and written for it, by us, from the facts of your business.
- A site built for the phone first, because that is the version Google reads.
- Speed: we do not launch a site that scores under 95 for performance on a phone.
- Every address of your old site kept or redirected, so that links and rankings are not thrown away.
- A request form that reaches you, a phone number that dials, and tracking that counts both.
- Business details in markup that search engines read, the same on every page.
- A site on WordPress, which you own and which any competent developer can take over.
How we build a site that ranks
A website ranks when each page is the clearest answer on the web to one search, and when Google can read it without trouble. Google’s own starter guide says there are no secrets that will automatically rank a site first. What there is, is structure, and we build it in from the first day instead of bolting it on after launch.
One page, one search
Before anything is designed we write down the searches the site is for and give each one to exactly one page. Two pages chasing one search compete with each other. The address, the title, the main heading and the description of a page then all say the same thing. Google’s guide asks for exactly this: a title that is unique to the page, clear and concise and accurately describes its contents, and a description that is short, unique to one page and includes its most relevant points.
Built for the phone first
Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with its smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking. That is its mobile-first indexing. A page that hides half its text on a phone has, as far as Google is concerned, half the text. We design the phone layout first, with the same content as the desktop one, and we check both before you see either.
Every old address keeps working
Most businesses that come to us already have a website, and its addresses have links and rankings attached to them. Before a rebuild we record every address the old site answers on. Each one is either kept exactly or sent to its replacement with a permanent redirect. That follows Google’s guidance on moving a site: map the old URLs to the new ones, use permanent redirects, redirect straight to the final destination instead of through a chain, and keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year. Google also tells you to expect temporary fluctuation in ranking during a move. We tell you the same thing before we start.
Markup that matches the page
Your business name, address, phone number, services and the questions a page answers are also published as structured data, the format search engines read directly. Google’s rule for it is short: structured data must be a true representation of the page content, and you must not mark up content that visitors cannot see. Ours comes from one record of the business, so the footer, the contact page and the markup can never disagree.
How we build a site that loads fast
A fast site is mostly a matter of what you leave out. Google measures real visitors’ experience with three figures it calls Core Web Vitals, and it publishes the marks to hit:
| Measure | What it tells you | Google’s mark for good |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | How soon the main content of the page appears | Within the first 2.5 seconds |
| Interaction to Next Paint | How quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks | Less than 200 milliseconds |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | Whether the page jumps around while it loads | Less than 0.1 |
Google says plainly that Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems. It says just as plainly that it always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par. Speed does not replace a page worth reading. It helps a page that is worth reading, and it decides whether a visitor on a train stays long enough to call.
These are the rules we build by:
- One theme, made for the site. No page builder and no bought theme carrying code for a hundred layouts you will never use.
- No slider libraries, and no script that the page needs before it can draw itself.
- No script from another company’s servers in the first load.
- Pictures in modern formats, cut to the size of the space they fill, with that space reserved so nothing jumps.
- Fonts served from your own site, two families at most.
- A whole page under 1 megabyte.
Then we measure. A site of ours does not launch if Google’s Lighthouse test scores its performance under 95 on a phone, and the target is 100. Lighthouse marks 90 to 100 as good, in green.
The Golden I Construction rebuild
Golden I Construction is a renovation contractor in New York City, and its website had been hacked. In October 2026 we did not patch it. We replaced it with a clean site. All 29 pages and 70 articles were rewritten. Every address of the old site was kept, so no link to it broke and no ranking was abandoned. On a phone, Lighthouse scores the new site 98 to 100.
It was not our first site. We built the website for Silver Gold Refinery when it opened an office in the Diamond District, and that business reached first place for “Gold Refinery NYC”. A website redesign was part of the work that took Medlin Ramps from very few leads a day to 3 to 10. All of our studies are on the case studies page.
A new site, a redesign, or a repair
Not every business needs a new website, and we will say so when yours does not. These are the four cases we see.
| What you have | What we would do | What carries over |
|---|---|---|
| No website, or one page from a builder | A new site, planned from the searches your customers make | Your name, your photographs and what you know about your trade |
| A site that looks dated but ranks for something | A rebuild: new design and new text on the same addresses | Every address, every link pointing at it, and whatever it ranks for |
| A site that has been hacked | A clean replacement, not a patch, with the old addresses kept | The content worth keeping, rewritten, and the addresses |
| A sound site that is slow or badly titled | A repair: speed, titles, descriptions and markup | Everything. A good site is not rebuilt to send an invoice |
What a website costs, and why
A website costs what its pages cost to plan, write, design, build and check, so the price follows the amount of work, and we give it to you up front. These are the things that move it:
- How many pages there are, and how much of the text has to be written new. Writing is the largest part of a site that ranks.
- Whether there is an old site to move. Recording its addresses and redirecting them is work a brand-new site does not need.
- Photographs. Your own pictures of real work are worth more than any stock photo. A site without them is cheaper to build and worth less.
- What the site has to do besides inform: a store, bookings, a calculator, a members’ area.
- What happens after launch: hosting, updates and new articles are running costs, apart from the build.
We quote website design and build prices after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.
The cheapest site is rarely the one that costs least. A template that takes four seconds to load and ranks for nothing is paid for again every month in the advertising it takes to make up for it. Prices for our other services are on the pricing page.
The stages, in order
We do not quote a number of weeks before we have seen what there is to build, and you should be careful of anyone who does. What we can tell you is the order of the work and what each stage waits for.
- Inventory. For an existing site: every address, title, link and ranking is recorded, and so is everything the site says about the business. Nothing true is lost and nothing false is copied across.
- Plan. The list of pages, the address of each and the search each is built for. You approve it before a word is written.
- Copy. Each page is written and its facts are checked. You correct anything about your business that we got wrong.
- Design. The look is made for your business and your colors, and you see it on real pages, not on a slide.
- Build and checks. Speed, links, forms, redirects and markup are tested by program and by eye.
- Review. You go through the finished site on a private preview address, on a phone and on a desktop.
- Launch. The new site takes the place of the old one, the redirects go live, and we watch that every old address still answers.
What makes a build long or short is the number of pages, how quickly questions and approvals come back, and whether the photographs exist. After launch, Google needs its own time: its guide says some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months.
What we need from you
- Access to your domain and your hosting, or the name of whoever holds them.
- Your logo files and your own photographs.
- The facts: services, service areas, hours, licenses, and anything the old site says that is no longer true.
- Where form requests should be sent, and the number that should ring.
- One person who can answer questions and approve pages.
About the first item. An architect in New York once came to us locked out of his own website: his previous web design firm held every login and he had access to none of it. Because he still held the domain registration, we could point the domain at new hosting and rebuild the site, and once Google crawled it again it began to rank for his kind of work. Keep your domain registered in your own name. It is the one thing that cannot be rebuilt.
After launch
At launch we report what was built: the pages, the speed scores, and where every old address now leads. From that day calls and form requests are counted, so the site can be judged on what it brings in. A new site is the start of the work, not the end. It has the structure to rank, and ranking still takes links, reviews and time. The usual next step is SEO or local SEO, and a business that needs calls this month adds Google Ads. A site built this way is also the kind AI search can read and quote. The platform itself, and what we do with existing WordPress sites, is on our WordPress development page.
Web design for a New York business
Many New York customers look up a local business on a phone, on the street or on the subway, and compare it with the businesses listed beside it. Two things follow for the design. The site has to load on a weak connection, which is the argument for everything in the speed section above. And the first screen has to say what you do, where you do it and how to reach you, before any scrolling.
Where you work matters as much as what you do. A site for a business that serves three boroughs says which three, and it gets a page for a borough or a neighborhood only when there is something true and local to put on it. The name, address and phone number on the site should read the same as on your Google Business Profile, so that a customer who checks one against the other finds one set of facts. The map results are a separate contest, which our local SEO page explains.
Our office is at 1115 Broadway in Manhattan, and the agency began in Queens. If you would rather talk a site through with someone who is in the city, that is us.
Tell us about the site you have and the customers you want. Call us, or use the contact page.
Questions people ask
How much does a website cost in New York City?
It depends on the work: the number of pages, how much text has to be written, whether an old site has to be moved with its addresses, and what the site must do besides inform. We give you the price up front, before anything starts. Hosting, updates and new articles after launch are running costs, apart from the build.
How long does it take to build a website?
We do not quote weeks before we know what there is to build. The stages run in a fixed order: inventory, plan, copy, design, build and checks, review, launch. The length depends on the number of pages, on how quickly approvals come back and on whether your photographs exist.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I redesign my site?
Not if the old addresses are handled properly. We record every address before a rebuild and keep it or redirect it permanently to its replacement, as Google’s guidance on site moves describes. Google itself says to expect temporary fluctuation in ranking during a move, and so should you.
Do you use templates or page builders?
No. Each site gets one theme made for it, with no page builder and no bought theme. That is the main reason our sites are light: a page carries only the code it uses.
Do you write the content?
Yes. Every page is planned for one search and written by us from the facts of your business, and the facts are checked. You read it before it goes live and correct anything we got wrong.
What platform do you build on?
WordPress. It is open source, so you own your site and are not tied to us: any competent developer can take it over. Our WordPress development page says how we build on it.
Can you fix a website that has been hacked?
Yes, and we would rather replace it than patch it. That is what we did for Golden I Construction in October 2026: a clean site in place of the hacked one, with all 29 pages and 70 articles rewritten and every old address kept.
How fast will my site be?
We do not launch a site whose performance scores under 95 on a phone in Google’s Lighthouse test. Google’s marks for a good experience are main content within 2.5 seconds, a response to a tap in under 200 milliseconds and a layout shift score under 0.1.