Launching a website depends upon two prime factors, web design and web hosting. The concept is a properly designed website has to be hosted properly to keep it live round the clock as Internet is visible from all corners of the world irrespective of the time zone or geographical boundaries.

The success of a website largely depends on web hosting, which determines the speed and availability of the website.

Once you decide your website to host, you will have plenty of options to choose from. Primarily you need to select which type of application would you like to host? Is it a simple website or you want to run an application with option of financial transaction like credit card processing. Again the question will come, would you like to perform the entire transaction in your website itself without routing the visitor to the payment gateway site or you want the payment should be processed at the payment gateway site and then a link will return the visitor to your website.

If you want to perform the entire operation in your website without the visitor diverting to any other payment processing website, then you need your host to support SSL.

Next comes the question whether you need a dedicated host or a shared host will suffice. It largely depends upon your requirements like the level of confidentiality, the type of application (whether mission critical), the amount of expected simultaneous visitors, payment processing etc.