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Sometimes it is hard to find out through a company 401K, but expense ratios are very important for mutual funds. Vanguard has one of the lowest in the industry.
If your company matches any amount, even if its only a percentage, like %50 of what you put in up to %x of your salary, you are throwing money away by not putting it in.
One set of priorities for investing is:
1) Whatever amount company matches. This is free money. It may take a while for vesting, but after you have been with the company 5-7 years, it can be a %50-100 gain on top of the funds performance.
2) Pay off credit card debt. Removing a %15-22 deficit is more important than any gains from investments.
3)Company 401K or Roth IRA using after-tax income. I have heard opinions that funding a Roth is better than a 401K. One advantage to 401K is that some plans let you borrow money from your 401K and pay yourself interest instead of borrowing from a bank. When investments are not performing, paying yourself the %7 interest is better than paying it to a bank.
4)Traditional IRA
This is just opinion. An accountant I know told me that he couldn't believe that Congress gave so much away on Roth IRAs.
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