Domain Name:
It is best to own your own name, even if you are being hosted with a free service like Tripod, Anglefire, GeoCities or one that is offered by your ISP. Most often in a free hosting circumstance you will get a long and often obtuse URL address that is difficult to remember and pass on. The value of owning your own name in this circumstance lies in the ability to redirect it to your free site thereby eliminating the disadvantage of the undesirable address. When you are ready to move your site to more spacious and less limiting quarters simply change the nameservers (the address the name is directed to) to your new host's address.

Choose a name that you will use for a while, you will be investing a lot of time marketing it. Make it easy to remember, easy to understand when said over a phone. It should say something about your services and possibly contain a keyword or keyword phrase.

Hosting companies invariably have a domain name search-and-purchase function accessible from their homepage, or you can go to whois.net to do your research. When you find the one (or two) that works for you buy it right away: the investment is small, don't risk losing it due to procrastination. Park the name if you want to redirect it or if you are not ready to publish your site. Purchasing and registering a domain name will run you probably between $10 and $35 USD a year.

Hosting
Your site needs to have an Internet address in order to be found on the Web. When you are ready to publish it you will need to decide what hosting solution is best for you: free or commercial. The many hosting choices fall within the following obvious categories: free, cheap, affordable and too expensive.

Some things you will want to take into consideration while evaluating the options available may include the following:

price - I usually consider the price first, and then last.
space - if you are storing a lot of graphics you will need more space.
data transfer - how much Web traffic do you think you will be pulling in, how does the hosting company handle overages? You don't want your site shut down if there is an incredibly good response to a promotional campaign and your limit is exceeded, but you also don't want to have to pay an exorbitant fee for additional bandwidth that can only be purchased in chunks far larger than you could possibly need.
Sub Domains - Will you want them? How many is sufficient? How autonomous are they, will they have their own CGI bin and mail boxes?
There are many other things to consider as your site grows: Shopping Cart Programs, Merchant Programs, Traffic Analyzing Programs . . .
What is it that you need right now to get your site off to a good start? Can you upgrade your plan easily when your site needs the other services or space?
Customer Service - When you have located a choice of packages offering what you need at the price you can afford it is time to evaluate the customer service they offer. This could be the most important consideration of all . The quality and availability of customer service should make the final decision.

 

First check out their online manual. Is it comprehensive and easy to understand? Then look to see if their person-to-person support is through e-mail, phone or online chat. What are the hours, how fast is their response. Try them out: send an e-mail, ask some questions. When you are having problems with your site, (notice I didn't say "if" ), you won't want to wait days for a reply. And when you are learning as you go, as most of us do, you will have need for quick and clear responses, particularly at the beginning.