Are you wondering how to sell tea online from home? If YES, here are 15 tips and strategies on how to sell tea online from home. In this age and time where people run businesses from home, it will do you a world of good to start and run your business from home. One of the businesses you can successfully start from home is to sell tea online.
Selling tea online is a thriving business in the United States. Recent statistics show that over 159 million people drink tea every day in the United States. This culminates in almost 80 percent of all U.S. households, with the market expected to grow annually by 5.74 percent within 2023-2025. Notably, this industry consists of both ready-to-drink and bagged teas.
Tea is known to stand out from all other beverages. It is a beneficial and healthy option when water does not satisfy. From iced-teas to teabags, the tea industry is experiencing stronger growth each day and has plenty of room for new merchants. With the health benefits, sustainability, and convenience, this industry is not expected to slow down.
Tips and Strategies on How to Sell Tea Online from Home
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Understudy a Successful Online Tea Business of Your Choice
The first step to take if you want to start an online tea business is to understudy successful online tea businesses. Understudying an online tea business will give you the privilege to avoid some mistakes you may likely make when starting your online tea shop. It will expose you to the ins and outs of running the business. You will be able to know how profitable the business is before you get started.
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Set Up Your Tea Shop
Another important tip you need to start selling online is to set up an online tea shop. The truth is that as an online tea seller, you will need a platform to complete transactions securely. Your website will also be your storefront, so it has to appeal to customers. You should consider keeping the design clean with basic fonts and limited media. You want each page to load fast and be easy on the eyes.
Have in mind that there are numerous ways to build an attractive and intuitive website, whether you are a well-renowned web designer or a beginner. You should consider leveraging an online platform that can help you design your website. Since no two platforms are the same, endeavor to research each one until you find the right fit.
Also, note that you can hire a professional web developer to build your online store. Hiring an expert can vary massively in cost, depending on your needs. Immediately you have your website up and running, you can start adding content right away. When you are ready to start selling your tea, ensure your product pages carry clear photos, briefs, and honest descriptions.
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Send Free Samples to Influencers
Working with social media influencers is no doubt, one of the successful strategies you can use if you want to start selling tea online. Interestingly, social media platforms are packed with influential bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and vloggers from a wide range of industries and niches. You just need to locate the right ones that will suit your online tea business.
Sending a free sample of your tea to influencers allows you to let them know that you appreciate their work. Hopefully, you will get a mention on one of their sites or platforms. Trust me, if you work with the right influencer, you will experience a spike in traffic and social media followers and this no doubt will result in to increase in sales for you.
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Leverage on Affiliate Marketing
When it comes to selling products online, trust me, it can be pretty difficult trying to sell your products alone which is why you must look for platforms to leverage on to get your products to more customers. Hence the need for affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you let other people market your products and send you website traffic. In return, you pay them a percentage of any sales that originate from their efforts. For example, a website owner may post your affiliate link for your tea for sale on their website.
If one of his website visitors clicks the link and then buys the tea, you’ll have made a sale, and as an affiliate, the website owner will be entitled to a percentage of that sale. The great thing about this selling strategy is that you only pay if you make a sale. Please note that the success of an affiliate marketing strategy depends heavily on the brand of tea you sell and the commission percentage you reward affiliate partners.
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Join the Right Network
Another important tip you need when it comes to selling tea online from home is to join the right network. With the right network, you will surely get guidance and support. When you launch an online tea business from home, people in your network will most likely become your first clients.
Online discussion forums and social media groups are great places to share industry tips and advice, answer questions, and acquire a customer or two. You can also make use of Google or Facebook to find active forums and groups that can give you the support you need for your online tea business.
Twitter chats and Discord can also be home to niche discussion groups. When you post, ensure you aren’t breaking any rules. Get to know the limits and restrictions of the forum, and stick to them. Using your forum avatar, signature, and profile page to promote your online tea brand is usually well within the rules.
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Offer a Surefire Money-Back Guarantee
One of the tips online stores use to gain customer confidence and trust is to let them know that there is a money-back guarantee if they are not satisfied with their product. So, if you are looking to start selling tea online from home, one of the ways you can win and retain a good percentage of the market share is to make sure you offer a surefire money-back guarantee for your tea.
The truth is that the more risk you remove from the prospect’s decision, the more likely they are to buy from you, so take away anything that could dissuade prospects from buying tea from you. The fact that they have not seen or tasted your tea makes the strategy highly needed for anyone that is just launching an online tea business for the first time.
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Provide as Many Payment Options as Possible
Another very important tip you must leverage if you want to start selling tea online from home is to make sure you provide as many payment options as possible. With that, it will be easier for you to accommodate different customers with different payment preferences.
By offering more payment options, you are making it easier for prospects to pay when they order tea from you. Sure, it can be a hassle to optimize your site and checkout process to include all these options, but doing so is a great way to increase online sales of your tea, particularly if your site has strong mobile traffic.
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Invest in Quality Product Images
Another strategy and you need if you want to start selling tea online from home is to make sure you invest in quality product images – the picture of your tea must be appealing and the story behind it must be compelling. The truth is that there is strong evidence that well-presented products in terms of pictures always attract more buyers. Given how important appearance is relating to how we perceive things (including other people), it stands to reason that investing in quality product photography will have a similar effect on visitors to your site.
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Pay Attention to Site Analytics
Paying attention to your site analytics is yet another tip and strategy that will make you successful when you start selling tea online from home. The truth is that it has been proven that the behavior of every website visitor from entry to exit helps you understand why you are selling, and more importantly, why you aren’t.
Your eCommerce website stats (or analytics) will show you what your customers are doing on your site, including which web pages they enter, the time they spend on particular pages, and the route they take to leave your site. Occasionally, some tools will display additional information, for instance how frequently a customer visits your site.
Interestingly, it won’t cost you a dime, either. Google Analytics is a completely free service, allowing you to measure your traffic in more ways than you can think of.
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Offer Top-Notch Customer Services
Another important tip that you need if you want to start selling tea online from home, is to offer top-notch customer services. Offering top-notch customer service will help you minimize customer friction which is the number one factor in determining whether you are successful in selling your product online. If you clearly explain how your product serves your customers, and make it easy for them to make a purchase, you are 90 percent on your way to selling online successfully.
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Find Your Unique Selling Point
To be successful in selling tea online from your home, you need to find your unique selling point. Whatever industry you are in, there are already thousands of other businesses doing exactly what you are doing. Some of these businesses have been selling online for years, so the best way to get your fair share of the available market is to analyze your competitors and discover what they don’t have that you do.
Your unique selling point can be your prompt shipping and delivery, top-notch customer service delivery, or just the uniqueness of your tea. Whatever your unique selling point might be, just make sure you leverage it to gain more customers.
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Grow Online Sales with Mobile Optimization
If you want to be successful selling tea online from home, then you need to grow your online sales with mobile optimization. The number of online businesses with poorly designed, badly optimized mobile sites is amazing. The truth is that if you don’t want to leave sales on the table, your site needs to be optimized for mobile.
Make it as easy as possible for mobile visitors to buy your products. This may involve an extensive overhaul of your checkout process or the design of an entirely separate mobile site. Amazon’s mobile site is an excellent example of how mobile commerce can be done, but you don’t need Amazon’s resources to create a compelling, user-friendly experience for visitors on mobile. Just look for the one that suits you and make use of it.
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Do Giveaways at Regular Intervals
Another important tip and strategy that you can use if you want to be successful with selling tea online are to do giveaways at regular intervals. People love free stuff, and the more you give away free products (tea), the more favorably prospective customers are likely to perceive you and your brand, which can result in more online sales. Giving stuff away for free isn’t just a great way to improve people’s perception of your business, it is also a great way to introduce them to your must-have products and tempt them to buy more.
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Run Instagram Contests to Encourage People to Suggest What they Want to See in Your eCommerce Store
Apart from paying for adverts on social media platforms, you can engage your followers on your plans. All you need to do is to run Instagram contests where customers can share their photos or video suggesting what they want to see in your eCommerce store and how they would want to be served et al. The photo that receives the most “Likes” can be rewarded with a discount or a free product on the day you launch your online tea store. This tip will help you gather momentum towards the day you have set aside to open your store.
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Invite People to Attend and Post Pictures of Your Opening Party
Another strategy you need to successfully start selling tea online from home is to encourage people to attend your opening party and let them know that they can get a reward (like free tea products and deliveries) if they post an Instagram photo of your products and mention your brand’s hashtag(s). The pictures must be taken on the day of the launch or perhaps within the first week of opening the business.