After you feel comfortable with the level of support a provider offers, consider what features are available. A basic understanding of what you know (and what you don't) will help direct your choice. If creating a site from scratch is intimidating, look for a provider that offers free website building software. This will save you from knowing html. You will also need a domain name to get your site up and some Shared Web Hosting providers even offer these for free. A free domain name should not be the main selling point for which provider you choose. After all, you can purchase a domain name from anyone from $2.99 - $12.99/year.
The opposite is possible as well. You can very well go straight into a company that overdelivers on all of the goodies that you end up staying with this company because it gave you what you wanted right from day 1 of signing up.
Not all Affordable Web Hosting companies offer unlimited amounts of e-mail addresses or e-mail accounts. If you are more than one person, a business for instance, you should consider web hosts that offer unlimited, or at least a lot more e-mail accounts than you need, to be sure you will not have to pay extra fees. You should also have a look on their web mail interface. Most web hosts offer web mail - but if it is poor, and you or other employees are traveling alot, you may want to reconsider your choice.
Additionally you need to look at the features that you are expecting with hosting plan. You can find many reliable hosting companies offer cheap rate shared-hosting packages. This is best hosting package normally for newbies and for any non-commercial websites. In shared hosting you can host multiple domains under one account in a Linux shared hosting plan but if you choose windows based shared hosting package then there is limit. This is the best way for newbies to build their internet business.
Get into Shared Web Hosting UK 2.0 (aka Social Networking)! Start a blog (you are reading an example), post a video on YouTube, set up a company page on Facebook, post press releases online, write and post articles about your area of expertise...The possibilities are growing all the time and the more work you put in the better the results you will achieve. Don't forget to link everything back to your site!!
Where do I buy a domain name? Don't worry. Nowadays, many hosting providers will give you free domain name just to sign up with them. But if you like to build many websites, then you will need to register domain names. I would suggest Moniker, Godaddy etc...
Buying a web hosting plan doesn't need to be expensive. Research the companies you are interested in and read customer reviews. Make sure you buy the appropriate amount of disk space and bandwidth. Shop around for the best deal before making a decision.