NYReport;

“Avatars — A pictorial presentation of a human in a chat environment— can improve your site visitors’ experience by not only putting a sense of you in your website, but by directing the site visitor to something important. Think of it as a guide or a salesperson for anyone who clicks on your site. Note that for some websites (corporate, news, etc) it could be annoying.

The avatar may point out site features, call attention to a special offer or do some hand-holding to improve the rate of conversion. Failure to convert when reaching checkout on an e-commerce site is a well-known source of frustration for companies that market their products online.

This is where an avatar, or multiple avatars, could be beneficial. For example, TotallyFurniture.com uses one avatar to point out on-site features and another to provide assistance with shipping on each product description page.

One benefit of using an avatar is to better utilize the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of your website. (People often don’t like to wade through FAQs; they prefer hearing the answer). An avatar answering the most popular FAQs up front, followed by a clickable FAQ, can help you eliminate a lot of questions formerly answered by phone, thus saving time and money.

SitePal (sitepal.com) makes the price of launching an avatar on your website affordable (it offers three levels of service starting at $9.95 per month) and the implementation relatively easy. The “cut and paste” avatar creation interface is painless and you can test-drive the experience for 15 days. For an additional cost, send SitePal a photograph and it will create an avatar that resembles you.

Using a well-placed avatar to get your customers’ attention, help them understand your product’s features and benefits or guide them through the checkout process will create the impression that you are there to help.