Do not select a host until you have discussed your website with web designer. My personal recommendation is to stay away from Yahoo, MSN or similar hosts. Many have proprietary features and if you need to add something you can’t or you need to hire someone to implement it (and generally someone that can work with the later charge quite a bit of money).

A good to excellent host is:
Flexible and makes it easy to manage the account information
Numerous features
Install software applications (shopping cart, blog, CMS)
Setup databases (MySQL, Access, MS SQL Server)
Has very good support
Has tutorials or help files for common questions, such as how do I setup my webmail or setup Outlook, etc. for receiving email, how to figure out the path to your web site (needed for many applications to work properly).

A poor to bad host:
Makes it difficult to do anything
Makes you go through them to implement changes
Charges you way too much for such basic features that it’s ridiculous (very small hosting size, low bandwidth, email accounts)
There’s no help files.

Good hosts have either cPanel, Fantastico or other one-click installs for many commonly used features or applications. They also have good stats for your website.