Your website isn’t just supposed to look good, it has an important purpose: to turn visitors into revenue, or in other words, to convert them.

This can happen by effectively guiding users through a discovery process from the moment they land on your site and giving them reasons to take the action you hope for. And all these require applying the right tactics.

So, to help you in your process, here are proven ways to increase website conversions:

1. Improve your landing page headline

It's always important to make a good first impression. Even more so when it comes to the headline of your landing page. If it can't catch your visitors' eye, few other things can.

Legendary copywriter, David Ogilvy said: “On average, five times as many people read the headline as those that read the copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

So, the better your headline, the more traffic you’ll drive to your pages and you'll also possibly increase website conversion rates.

Of course, it’s not about turning headlines into clickbait. It’s about making them relevant to your target audience.

Ideally, your headline should reveal the benefits a user will get from reading your content. And, it should clearly describe what you offer to them – the solution you'll give them.

Quick tip: Add a number to your headline to increase click-rate. Having a number (e.g., 7, 10, 21, 60) in your headline is eye-catching and will generate more clicks.

There are many headline formulas that work, any number of which may be useful for your business. Try A/B testing your headlines to see what resonates with your particular audience.

By testing headlines and subheadlines, eMove boosted their conversion rate by 67.8 percent. Below you can see their first headline (which was question-based).

As users weren’t responding well to it, they changed to the following.

(Source: Growthmanifesto)

2. Integrate live chat to engage and nurture prospects

Live chat used to be considered a fancy feature for a website to have. But it’s fast becoming essential if you want to increase your website conversion rate.

Consider that one of the main reasons prospects leave your website is because they can’t find what they are looking for. In some cases, they might have questions about your services they need urgent answers to.

But, if the only options your website offers are a contact form or social media, there is a high chance you are losing customers who don't want to wait long for an answer.

Conversely, the average response time for live chat is 2 minutes. To put this number in perspective, consider that the likely response times for social media and emails are 10 hours and 17 hours respectively.

Considering the responsiveness of live chat, many customers prefer it. According to an eConsultancy survey, 79 percent of customers said they prefer live chat support because they can get their questions answered on time.

But that’s not all. Customer satisfaction is higher when live chat is used as a means of customer support, rather than other channels.

In fact, 73 percent of customers are satisfied with their live chat experience.

So, it's natural that live chat helps you increase conversion rates. A report by eMarketer found that 35 percent more people made a purchase online after using live chat.

Thanks to live chat, HDFC life raised customer satisfaction to 94 percent and Acquire grew its customer base by 48 percent.

3. Use the right unique selling point

Why should your prospects conduct business with you rather than your competitors? Knowing and defining your unique selling proposition (USP) is critical to answering this question.

The first thing you need to be clear about is why your business is unique. Is it price? Is it customer service? Is it product features?

Think about the pain points your product can solve better than others. Drive this point home to persuade your customers about the uniqueness of your business throughout your website messaging.

For instance, FedEx states they are fast and reliable. That is their unique selling proposition. So what’s yours?

Bellroy sees their unique selling point as slimming down customers’ wallets and communicate this clearly to their prospects.

Best Buy uses low prices as their unique selling point. They dare you to ‘Find a lower price and we’ll match it.’

4. Use cobrowsing to quickly solve customer queries

When you combine chat, audio, or video with cobrowsing, you can boost your website conversions far more than you would by using each of those channels alone. This is because cobrowsing allows you to use visual cues to explain things to your visitors through their screen displays.

With this tech, you have the power to walk customers through exactly what to do – right there in front of them on their screen – and help them convert, e.g. by filling out a form they had trouble with initially.

So, unsurprisingly, several small businesses found that combining chat and cobrowsing provided a conversion lift of 69 percent more than chat alone. They also found that audio and cobrowsing provided a 78 percent lift while video and cobrowsing provided a 138 percent lift over chat alone.

5. Use chatbots to answer customer questions at any time

Live chat is fast, but the best way to make sure you answer your users’ queries as quickly as possible is through chatbots.

According to one survey, chatbots are most likely to be used for getting a quick answer in an emergency, resolving a complaint or problem, and getting detailed answers or explanations.

According to the same survey, the biggest benefits of chatbots to your business are that they can provide 24-hour service. Website visitors can get an instant response, to their questions about your products or other topics.

When Amtrak integrated a Chatbot AI on their website, they found it answered over five million questions in a year, increasing bookings by 25 percent. Amtrak also generated 30 percent more revenue on bookings through chatbots, with a whooping 800 percent ROI.

6. Improve the usability of your site

When visitors find it easy to use your website, it creates a better user experience. Ultimately, that means more conversions for your business.

There are lots of ways you can increase the usability of your website:

i). Make your website mobile responsive: These days, a large chunk of web traffic comes from mobile devices. A mobile-responsive website makes sure your mobile visitors don’t miss out on the same great experience as desktop users.

In fact, when Offspring made their website mobile-responsive, it improved their mobile site usability score from 60/100 to 100/100 on Google, leading to 15.19 percent increase in mobile conversion rate and 102.58 percent increase in mobile revenue.

ii). Use a simple navigation layout: All the important parts of your website must be easily accessible from any other page on your website.

iii). Improve page loading speed: If your website takes too long to load, it could mean users will bounce, causing a drop in conversions. In fact, according to a survey by KISSmetrics, 40 percent of shoppers will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.

iv). Use personalized triggers: Try sending automated greetings to your visitors in the language of the country they’re visiting from. You could even send a message to returning visitors to welcome them back to the site. After users have spent a set amount of time on your pricing page, engage them in a chat, or send them a special offer.

Related: Find out the principles of engaging website redesign.

7. Focus on your key traffic referral source

There are lots of different online traffic sources, but a business site usually gets the majority of its traffic from just a few. For some businesses, it’s search engines that are driving organic traffic, while for others, it's social media networks (such as Facebook).

Using Google Analytics traffic stats, it’s easy to identify your main traffic referral sources.

Once you identify these traffic sources, invest more effort into them. In doing so, you are increasing your chances of scaling traffic and therefore increase your website conversion rate.

For example, Neil Patel, the well-known inbound marketing expert, knew that LinkedIn drives the most engaged users to his blog. By increasing his LinkedIn engagement by 386 percent, he almost doubled the social media traffic to his blog.

The road to increase website conversion rates is tough

Increasing conversions isn't easy, but it's vital to your business. Take a stab at the tactics we discussed above, but also try to provide exceptional service possible in every aspect of your customer relationships. And that's because, if your customers are happy, they may bring you more visitors, which may in turn result in higher conversion rates.