Web Hosts Help Oddcast Deal Characters

• By theWHIR.com , July 07, 2005

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By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com

July 7, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Conversational character software developer Oddcast (oddcast.com) has teamed up with some of the Web host industry?s largest players to help small businesses bring their Web content to life.

Using 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. The answers are triggered by pre-selected keywords that are found within questions.

While Oddcast has developed and distributed conversational services for more than five years, Oddcast senior VP Oren Levy says its new Web hosting partnerships will help the company to reach a greater audience.

"We?ve identified the hosting industry as one of the best distribution channels," says Levy, "because many of them target the same audience, in terms of the price point they?re looking for, and their skill levels in implanting and building a new site."

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.

As an added incentive, Oddcast has decided to deliver its services to Web hosting companies at a 20 percent discount, providing Web hosting firms with an additional means of generating revenue.

"Hosting is a commodity and this [partnership] gives them a premium offering that offers added value for their customers," says Levy. "It also provides them with a source of reoccurring revenue, because we?re an ASP and our model is a reoccurring license, so we share the revenues with the hosting companies."

Hostway (hostway.com) is among the Web hosting firms to offer Oddcast?s SitePal service as an added feature to its regular plans, while C I Host (cihost.com) and Register.com (register.com) have recently signed agreements to deliver the service. Oddcast also plans to partner with companies that provide Web site building tools such as templates.

According to Levy, Oddcast?s conversational software has proven to be an effective tool by creating an efficient interactive environment and helping it to achieve greater business results.

"One of our customers, Goldfish Software, was able to increase convergence on their site by 33 percent. We know that a call to action from a virtual character gets a higher response rate."

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