If you want to establish an online presence, you need to have a professional looking website. It is important that the website has a user friendly navigation. If the site has a messy navigation, the customers will have difficulty locating a product. The following are some tips on how to choose a good web hosting service for small office or home office (SOHO) business.

Before you shop for a web hosting plan, you must determine your needs. For example, if you own an Oscommerce site, the hosting plan should include the Oscommerce script. In this way, you will be able to transfer your Oscommerce site to the server easily. Hosting plans that feature Fantastico offers shopping cart script which you can install on your server. The hosting plan should be able to accommodate all your needs such as space, bandwidth, and etc.  The server should have enough space to store the photos of the products. If your website hosts a lot of podcasts and videos, you should  choose a hosting plan that offer unlimited space and bandwidth.

You must have a domain in order to register for a hosting service. You can purchase domains from the hosting provider or a domain name registration service. The domain is the URL which your visitors type into the web browser to view your website. The domain should contain the main keyword of the product or services which you are promoting. For instance, if you are selling greeting cards, you can name you domain name as greetingcardstore.com. If you already own a website, you don’t have to register for a new domain. After you have purchased a hosting plan, you must redirect the DNS of your domain to the host.

Before signing up a web hosting service, make sure you compare the prices between different providers.  If the web hosting is priced at an unbelievable price of only a dollar per month, you should probably avoid it. Most of the time, a really cheap web hosting company does not deliver the services they promise. If they can’t handle the request of the customers, they could shut down their web hosting company and run away with the money. You can read web hosting reviews to find out what customers are say about the companies. If most of the customers complain about the service of the hosting company, it is best that you don’t sign up with them. If you see many good reviews, you can rest be assured that the company will provide a high quality hosting service.