style=”color: #888888;”>The International Business Series is brought to you by UPS. Discover the new logistics. It levels playing fields and lets you act locally or globally. It’s for the individual entrepreneur, the small business, or the large company. Put the new logistics to work for you.

Today’s business, regardless of size, isn’t limited by geography. The days of opening up markets with large scale expansions and trade agreements have gone by the wayside due to the borderless nature of the Internet. Now, anyone with an Internet connection can do business on a global scale. But, if you want to find markets to expand your business outside of the U.S. there are some things you should understand before you get started.

Know what you don’t know

Even if you only plan to sell a few items globally from your ecommerce website, your efforts to expand will benefit from gaining knowledge about doing business internationally. Best practices, global communication tips, payment, trade opportunities and shipping are issues that require some study and vary from country to country.

This International Business Development Series by Cindy King is a great place to start your education. The U.S. Department of Commerce offers some nice research on global competition. Also check out sites like BuyUSA.gov, Export.gov , and Trade.gov

Test the waters

One of the easiest ways to expand is to do so in the handful of English speaking countries around the world. The language barrier can add extra logistics if you’re just getting started.

Make use of free and low-cost tools such as Skype – to make international calls, PayPal – to facilitate International transactions, UPS small biz (yes a sponsor of this post, but great tools and info) and even Google Translate – to help with basic language translations is a great way to start branching out without spending a great deal of money to set up shop.

Understand how your brand translates

One mistake small businesses can make when reaching out to global audiences is to misunderstand the impact, or lack of, that important brand elements or terminology may have.

For example, my brand, Duct Tape Marketing, carries a great deal of impact and communicates a very specific message to North American small businesses, but has far less and even confusing impact even in English speaking countries like Great Britain.

If you plan to get serious about global expansion you may need to reassess many of the elements of your brand to make sure they translate effectively.

Make your site global friendly

For many small, global businesses the website is the port of entry. It’s essential that you start look for ways to Internationalize your site and in some cases even create localized versions. You may even consider using a professional translation service to create localized landing pages and versions of your site.

Add a map to show your location and offer free translation tools so that visitors can translate on their own. Get local testimonials as soon as you can and feature customers from other parts of the world to demonstrate your reach.

Even if your entire site is in English there are ways to make it more global friendly. Want to know the best way to write English for a global audience? Subscribe to the The International Herald Tribune – the global edition of the New York Times features short, simple sentences, avoids cliches and sticks to active verbs – all good examples of writing for a non native reader.

Get feet on the street

If your international efforts pay off and you want to expand further you may want to find local representation. At the very least you should take a trip and learn what you can about some of the countries you plan to sell in. Business.gov offers some great resources on traveling abroad for business.

One of the best ways to learn about a region’s business climate is to attend a trade show related to your industry. This is a great way to sniff out potential product sources, local representatives and make state and local government contacts.