SitePal press release listing
WebPro News, November 2005Having animated characters on your website can be a good way to increase your conversion and sales. ...
SitePal from Oddcast is one good source for such characters. SitePal's animated speaking characters enable you to deliver your messaging using both sight and sound, which reinforces your messaging and establishes trust. Shanghai Daily News, November 2005Avatars allow users to live vicariously through their ideal alter-ego and create a compelling "spokesperson" to address others in the cyber realm.
As New York-based avatar creator and distributor Oddcast.com found, avatars are rapidly becoming a hit for companies seeking innovative ways to market their products.
www.ecommerce-guide.com, August 2005When it comes to running your company's Web site whether you're selling online or providing information to drive sales at your brick-and-mortar location it pays to differentiate your business from the competition. Oddcast, a New York City-based company, believes its SitePal service is just the tool to make small business sites stand out in an overpopulated Internet. WHIR News, August 2005SitePal Reseller Program Offers Unique Value. The new reseller program provides Web designers, developers and Internet consultants with a development interface for creating multiple characters and managing all customer accounts within a central environment. Small Business Computing.com, August 2005When it comes to running your company's Web site ? whether you're selling online or providing information to drive sales at your brick-and-mortar location ? it pays to differentiate your business from the competition. Oddcast, a New York City-based company, believes its SitePal service is just the tool to make small business sites stand out in an overpopulated Internet. Smallbiztechnology.com, August 2005Oddcast has raised the bar with its easy to use avators by embedding artificial intelligence with them. Oddcast's characters are great for greeting visitors to your web site, but they now can be used to answer questions. Web Host Industry Review, July 2005Using its innovative SitePal (SitePal.com) service, Oddcast helps small businesses achieve higher Web sales and customer conversion rates by deploying interactive conversational agents. SitePal offers Web site visitors a unique customer service experience, providing prompt answers to any visitor questions through the mouth of an animated character.
... Oddcast offers three affordable SitePal packages, custom suited to fit the business needs of the Web hosting client. The plans start at $9.95 per month, ranging from the basic tools needed to create a character, all the way up to a fully customized, interactive artificial intelligence that can be integrated into any Flash movie. BusinessWeek, July 2005Oddcast's "SitePal" has been adopted by many smaller retailers who can't afford staffing as many live customer-service reps as an Overstock. Depending on how many customers the animated sales rep helps, the software can cost anywhere from $500 to $15,000 per year. Software e-tailer Goldfish Software credits its animated sales rep with converting 33% more of its browsers into buyers. MediaPost, May 2005by Shankar Gupta
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT online merchants lament about the Web is its
impersonality. No matter how friendly or inviting a Web site, it's not the
same as having an enthusiastic, perky salesperson give upbeat answers to
customers' questions. Oddcast's SitePal? product can put the aforementioned
salesperson on your site. Using its online studio, Web site owners can
create a virtual character - choose their look, customize their facial
features and clothing, and add a background - give them some lines, and have
them pitch their product on the site. The characters are cartoonish, but
their movements are synched well with their speech, and when not talking,
they idly glance around in a realistic fashion.
The voice can be added over the phone, through Oddcast's text-to-[speech] technology, recorded using Oddcast's audio software, or contracted using
professional voice talent; the company offers a voice talent store as well.
The process of adding the SitePal? to one's site is fairly simple - once the
character is created in the studio, it can be easily embedded in the HTML of
the site, or it can be made into a flash video and uploaded onto the site.
For eBay junkies, SitePal? can even be embedded into online auctions. All of
these options require a minimum in programming knowledge.
SitePal? is offered in three packages: Bronze, Silver, and Gold, which cost
$99.50 to $499.50 a year. Buying more expensive services ramps up the number
of different SitePal[s] you can have simultaneously, the number of times they
can be streamed to customers, and the variety of models and backgrounds.
There are some downsides to having a talking virtual character on your site.
If the character is set to begin talking immediately then a delay in loading
time can lead to the character piping up after the user is already absorbed.
Plus, after the character says its piece, it remains active, which can
distract and act as a hovering, over-eager salesperson. B to B Magazine, March 2005McAfee speaks to its customers, boosts sales with animated 'avatar':
McAfee Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of security software, faced a challenge marketing one of its b-to-b products, ASaP VirusScan. The online store had plenty of browsers but many fewer buyers, said Gladys Gavlak, eCommerce marketing and business development manager.
Looking to give customers more information without making the site too text-heavy, McAfee chose Flash-based technology from Oddcast Inc., a company that designs animated virtual characters, or "VHosts."
Potential customers listened to the avatar's audio message 81% of the time. As a result, the average close rate for customers who saw the Flash-based avatar was 10% higher than for those who didn't. In fact, average daily sales went up by 10% during the time the avatar was deployed on the product site. Web Marketing Today, March 2005Unless you can engage your site visitor, he or she may be gone within a few seconds and never find out what you have to offer. I've been experimenting with SitePal's speaking animated characters or avatars (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/sitepal.htm) and have seen some impressive preliminary results.
My goal was to use SitePal to get the visitor to read what's on the webpage. Here's what I've found so far, doing an A/B split-test employing Vertster Split-Testing System (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/vertster.htm) and comparing results using ClickTracks web analytics software (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clicktracks.htm) -- both of which I really like! I used an 18 second message. SitePal suggests that message time should be 10 to 25 seconds or less for greatest effectiveness.
Average Time on Site
313 sec. (without SitePa)
417 sec. (with SitePal)
+33% (Difference)
Page Views per Visitor
4.8 pages (without SitePal)
5.6 pages (with SitePal)
+17% (Difference)
Note: These are specialized pages and unfortunately aren't representative of the average time on site and page views per visitor of all visitors. Total sample was 618 visitors split into two equal groups over a 16 day period.
Though I haven't tested it yet, some have reported that SitePal avatars on landing pages have increased conversion rates significantly.
SitePal's backend allows you to build the avatar of your choosing, beginning with a variety of models. You can alter the shape and color of the face, hair, lips, nose, age, clothing, and background to get the effect you want. I uploaded MP3 files for the voice. A basic account is $9.95 for a one-month license with 2,500 streams (i.e., the message is played 2,500 times). A one-year account is $99.9 for 30,000 streams, averaging about $8.3/month. You can create characters at no charge to try out the system, though to stream them from your site requires payment. (It's intriguing how their eyes follow your mouse, though I haven't succeeded in making them cross-eyed -- yet.)
Is SitePal more effective than website video? I haven't tested that. But it's certainly easier to produce and uses less bandwidth, since it is implemented with Flash. SitePal can be programmed to speak a different message each time the webpage is loaded, so you can say one thing to first-timers and another to returnees who may be more serious about your offer. SitePal characters can also respond to visitor questions using a knowledge base and artificial intelligence techniques. If you use geo-targeting, messages can be varied by geographical location of the visitor. This tool provides a number of possibilities to personalize your visitor's experience.
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