Mohammed Ismail Khan, Ph.D., president and CEO of American Global Business, Inc., cites expense and a lack of resources as the factors that keep small businesses from taking the global plunge. So, what are some of these "barriers to entry"?

* Whether it’s through the Internet or a personal contact, business owners seeking to go global must create a presence in the international marketplace.

* Small businesses must also face language barriers. Brochures, product manuals and other information must be understood in various languages.

* Extensive and often expensive research must be conducted. Whether looking for international suppliers or learning about companies abroad, businesses need to be in the know.

* Your culture competency must be up to par. Whether considering company names and slogans or making personal contacts, knowing what’s culturally acceptable is paramount.

It’s clearly no surprise why the global marketplace can seem daunting to smaller businesses. However, companies such as American Global Business, Inc. are making a big task much smaller.

"Small- to medium-sized businesses from different parts of the world must unite, communicate and sell their products and services to anyone on earth who has accesses," said Khan.

American Global Business, Inc. does just that. Businesses join the company as members and have access to other members and partners, tips and advice, suppliers worldwide and exposure to global markets through marketing.

This innovative, business-community approach is creating global success for small businesses and changing the way small businesses do business in a big, global way.

You want your e-commerce website to be professional-looking, organized, quick and easy to navigate.  Make sure you have an informational website, which is search engine friendly. Present special deals, encourage up selling in a customer-friendly way (i.e. show related items or additional items that customers purchased, who also purchased the item the user purchased). Have the site be accessible in the major languages, and accept major currencies. Implement a user friendly shopping cart and single page checkout. 

Select a provider that will give you site design, development and hosting. Selecting a provider that handles all of these facets for can save you time and prevent frustration. By choosing a website and hosting combination, you are sure that your e-commerce package will be compatible across the board. 

Make sure your e-commerce site calculates tax and shipping costs. The more calculations your site can handle, the easier it is for the user to have a pleasant shopping experience.

Confirm that your e-commerce solution can provide customer reports. While reports are not useful to customers, they are useful for you. E-commerce packages that offer reports help you track of your costs and earnings. They save a lot of frustration and help you to plan marketing strategies and inventory adjustments effectively.

Newspapers, magazines and radio and television news programs are filled with stories about businesses and organizations. Those who know how to present materials professionally to the right people will get media coverage for free, while those who don’t understand how publicity works have to rely on large advertising budgets to reach their audiences, usually with less impressive results.

"If you can get a news organization to report about your event or praise something you’re doing, you have gained an enormous amount of credibility that simply couldn’t be generated through paid advertising," said David Forman, a public relations veteran and author of "Publicity Professor," a workbook that teaches business owners how to get free news coverage.

The first step in reaching out to media professionals is to create an appealing press release. Its main purpose is to get an editor or producer interested in what you have to say or in what you are doing. It should contain enough information, specifics and quotes that a writer can craft a story from it without ever having to call you.

A media alert is another tool for getting press coverage. Its purpose is to give news assignment desks the specifics about an event in a way that entices editors or television news directors to send a reporter or camera crew.

Website design takes care of the look and feel of the website. Website design can be as unique and creative as necessary to reflect the business image and produce a visitor friendly experience at the same time. But relying solely on website design to build a website can severely limit its effectiveness.

For example, oftentimes websites are built entirely through flash animation, many times a the client’s request. Flash animation websites are almost entirely image-based. Although flash animation websites are extremely popular, these website designs are notoriously subject to be bypassed by search engine spiders because search engine spiders cannot read imagery. Regardless of how much text is within the flash animation, to a search engine spider, the text simply does not exist. Because of this limitation, such sites never appear on search engines if they have not undergone extensive web development. 

Web Development 

Web site development makes a website work well with search engines and existing Internet technology. This service, in addition to good website design, will provide the best exposure, usability and visibility for your website.  

For example, although the graphical elements of website design include the navigation bar, the navigation process (how a visitor travels through your site) is accomplished through a variety of development methods. For instance, internal page hyperlinks, breadcrumb links, site maps and a search function all play a role in user-friendly navigation. These functions can only be achieved through effective website development. 

The way the content of the website design is managed is also a part of web development. Bringing continuity to website design is best achieved by using cascading style sheets or CSS, which is a web development process.  CSS also allows for quicker recognition and response by search engine spiders, thereby increasing the visibility of a website in search engines.