SitePal Animated Talking Avatars: Are They Right for Your Web Site?

SitePal is a company that allows people to create virtual talking avatars for use on web sites. You know, those speaking cartoon characters that look like those creepy animations on those Schwab commercials. The intent is to create a more personal attachment between the web site visitor and the entity that runs the web site. According to SitePal, the integration of sight and sound that is afforded by these avatars enriches the sense of trust between customer and salesperson. In other words, actually hearing the sales pitch from a company increases trust more than merely reading the words. This is actually a pretty provable contention in the world of sales. It is, in fact, the very foundation of direct mail advertising that isn’t geared to selling you anything, but rather is designed to entice you into the store. It is easier to trust a smiling salesperson than ink on paper.

SitePal allows the person who wants to create one of these animated avatars to customize their design so that it resembles them physically, or else create a figure that appeals to customer or business ideals. For instance, if your site is marketed toward a particular ethnic group there is already a base model to cover generic racial attributes. As most of us know by now, there really isn’t a generic Asian or Hispanic or African-American “look” any more than there is a generic Caucasian appearance. SitePal therefore allows you to tweak those generic attributes. Why would this matter from a sales point of view? Well, let’s say that your web site offers skin care products specifically for a darker-colored skin type. Just as you obviously wouldn’t want to create a Caucasian SitePal avatar, neither would you probably want to create a light-skinned African-American avatar. By the same token, if you are creating a SitePal animated talking character for a web site that exclusively books vacations to Scandinavia you would probably want a figure with blonde hair, but that doesn’t mean you want her to look like a bronzed California surfer girl, does it?

The look of your animated figure is only half the story. The point of SitePal is that these animated characters also talk. They can be used for introducing your visitors to your site, giving them navigational guidance, or for any other use you can think of. SitePal offers several options for giving your character a voice ranging from simply recording your text to using prerecorded computer files to a sophisticated text to voice software program available for premium uses. You can use your phone to provide the words your avatar will speak. The SitePal program automatically ensures realistic lip synching so you don’t have to worry about that end.

But is this a good thing? SitePal claims on their web site that businesses that use this technology report an increase in sales after installing an animated talking spokesperson on their site, but that’s hardly reliable data. Personally speaking, I still think these things are every bit as creepy as those animated people on the Schwab commercials.