This may be why Web hosting provider Bravenet (bravenet.com) recently announced it has partnered with the avatar software provider to offer SitePal to its customer base of approximately 8.6 million registered members.

"Our business development partnership and platform integration with SitePal is an exciting relationship for us at Bravenet. This partnership demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing next generation business solutions for our loyal base of members," says Anna Love, director of business development at Bravenet. "The SitePal platform is an innovative addition to our Web hosting and site building solutions. It will provide our users with a cost-effective way to increase site stickiness and visitor loyalty and also help them drive traffic and convert site visitors into buyers."

Oddcast says SitePal is easy to use and enables businesses to create a wide array of highly customizable, animated speaking characters to put on their Web sites to ultimately increase retention rates, overall acquisition of new members and revenue.

Practically speaking, Oddcast says its avatars can be used as virtual salespeople to promote products and services, as virtual auctioneers for eBay auctions or as interactive assistants who can answer user questions or direct visitors to specific areas of a Web site and to create online help and product information systems.

Oddcast's VP of business development and strategy, Shaival Shah, says the tool is industry agnostic and can be useful to a variety of businesses for several reasons.

"Merchants are interested in it typically is for the ability to have a personal relationship with the user. In a real life situation, the reason we usually buy from smaller businesses is because of the customer service, customer care and the relationship with the owner," says Shah. "The problem with online is that we're all kind of created equal and businesses need that personal flair to draw that connection with the user. With SitePal and having the ability to have a character on your site, you can customize it to look and feel as you please and you can create a brand. You can establish a personality connection point with the user that you otherwise couldn't get in the online world."

Shah says that company studies have found that having a talking avatar can increase traffic from anywhere between 15 to 500 percent and sales conversion rates from 30 to 1000 percent. In addition, the avatars enable business owners to deliver messages using sight and sound, which reinforces their messaging and establishes trust.

"The reason those metrics are as high as they are is that with this avatar, as soon as you're on the site, it starts speaking to you and will immediately tell you what the site is all about. This increases the behavior of the user on that site and keeps people on the site for longer," says Shah. "And then it's also an intellectual avatar, so it actually recognizes, based on user behavior, what you're interested in doing and it directs you to the appropriate part of the site from there on out."

Shah says that although Oddcast usually sells its products directly to the end user, it found that Bravenet's conversion rates and interest in delivering unique Web tools to its customers made it an attractive partnership to forge.

"It's really the only post-click tool like this that's out in the market today, whether it's an avatar or not," says Shah. "As soon as someone comes to the site, the avatar immediately picks that person up and tries to convert them from a browser to a buyer. Just getting online and setting up and getting traffic to the site is an extremely costly process and that's all upfront investment. For me to justify that kind of ongoing spending and the reasons for an online presence, I need to make sure I can convert anyone that comes to my site into a buyer, and this will enable businesses to do that."