For your menus and other background colours bear following in mind:

Red is stimulating and agressive.

Blue is peaceful and tranquil.

Gree is calm and refreshing.

Yellow grabs peoples attention.

Purple is wealthy and luxurious.

Brown is solid and reliable.

Orange is bright and optimistic.

Sin #4 Poor spelling and grammar If you're selling a product or service online and your website is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes then you're on a loser immediately. I recently reviewed an ebook that had 4 very bad spelling mistakes including word business misspelled in opening paragraph. Inexcusable. We all make mistakes but keep them to a minimum. A visitor may forgive one typo. You may not get a second chance.

Here's 3 tips for checking your webpages.

1. Use a spell checker. Every word-processor has one.

2. Proofread anything you write from bottom to top. You'll spot more mistakes that way.

3. Always proof read anything you've written 24 hours later. You'll be amazed at how many mistakes you'll spot.

Sin #5 Flashing graphics Banners or logos that flash, spin, fade in and out and/or perform any other gimmick are a no go area. Don't use them. Flashing banners and logos say "I've never put together a website before. Cool, huh?" Any website with this type of graphic element turns me off. A website logo or banner should be a static graphic or text. Online marketing surveys consistently report that animated icons and graphics on a website are a major turnoff for visitors.

Sin #6 Hit counters Only used by amateurs. Take them off your website. Please. Any decent webhost can provide you with traffic stats which will provide much more accurate information than a hit counter. Having a hit counter on your website was a good idea 8 years ago. The online world has moved on. You should too.

There's an old rule of sales:

"If I could see through John Smiths eyes I could sell John Smith what John Smith buys".

Design your website for your visitor and not for you.

For a free standard submission click on “suggest a site” link and fill out submission form.

For paid submission go to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+business

LookSmart

Before MSN announced it was switching to Inktomi, LookSmart was power horse behind their popular search engine. In fact, MSN accounted for half of LookSmart’s revenue. But don’t let MSN’s departure stop you from submitting to LookSmart – it still distributes to other search engines so it’s important to get your site listed.

Like Yahoo! LookSmart has a free submit (non-commercial) option and a paid submit for commercial ones.

To submit for free go to www.zeal.com and sign up as a member. Once you’ve completed form and passed test you can submit your site using “manage” option and “Add a site” link.

To submit for paid inclusion go to www.listings.looksmart.com and fill out online form. LookSmart’s paid listings are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC)basis. Meaning you only pay when a user clicks on your listing and visits your web site. A $0.15 CPC is given for first 5,000 clicks when you pay with a credit card online. Any clicks after 5,000 are billed at your business category rate, which ranges from $0.23 to $0.75 per click.

The Open Directory

Although Open Directory is volunteer built it is essential to Web site owners. Submission is free but turnaround time for a yes or no answer to your submission may take a long time.

To submit your site visit www.dmoz.org, identify your category then use “add URL” form. Fill out form and you’re done.

There are other smaller and directories you may also want to consider. They include: GoGuides, Gimpsy, JoeAnt and Web-Beacon.