E-Commerce 101 -
Websites are the virtual equivelent of a shops front window, where traders show off their best products to entice passing visitors inside for a better look and hopefully make that all important purchase from the store.
As Darkmere points out you have as a website designer just four seconds to grab the visitors attention AND let them find where on site they want to look next. Good design helps but so does a passing understanding in the mechanics of human perception to see what I mean push your chair back three to five feet and try
actually reading the page.
1.White text on black is considered a design
don't, few sites manage to pull it off succesfully and even then only with the aid of a larger font size.
2.Avoid using fancy fonts like the plauge, particulary handwriting style ones anywhere on site except for the site logo and then only maybe.
3.RESEARCH! look at what the sites established competitors are doing and consider how you can do better.
I did actually find a catrering website that uses white on black and oddly enough it also suffers from the same problems with the menu legability.
http://www.penniblack.co.uk/