Sitepal - Another Service like Bubble Guru

[ayushpant]

Hey there,

This is in continuation to discussion about Bubble Guru. Recently I came across this service called Sitepal. It lets you add animated characters to your website. Kind of similar to Bubble Guru, except here there are animated characters, not you.

What particularly impressed me about this service was that not only you can use their "Text to Speech" service to let the animated characters speak what you want them to.

But, you can record your own voice through telephone. For example, they give you an account number and a pin where you can call them and record your message. That message is beautifully embedded into the character that who have chosen.

Of course, you could use a microphone too, but I really liked this phone recording service.

Of course, there's a lot of customization you can do with your Avatar like background, hair color, etc etc (kinda similar to Yahoo Avatar's except they speak too on your behalf).

Unfortunately, the service is not free. I just tried the demo and liked it a lot. I am not sure what good it can do for your website. But, I thought that this would be a great addition to the latest discussion we are having about Bubble Guru.

I in no way endorse this service or anything. Its just something I came across. I'll leave the rest up to you guys to explore.

That's it for now.

 

[Linda Buquet]

When I discovered SitePal about 4 years ago I thought it was the coolest thing EVER! I became an affiliate and was sure the concept would just skyrocket.
Never made a dime.

It does a lot more now than it did way back then.
I still think it's pretty cool stuff and am surprised more don't use it.

 

[Ray Rippey]

SitePal

My company just added sitepal to our website... We're doing the 15 day trial... we'll see what happens.

My wife thought it was good. I used the text to speech because I like the female computer voice.. it is very good. I'm sure not going to use my voice!

It is cool because I am just basically introducing the website... then they can go poke around... I don't want to overdo it.

You do have to pay for it.. which personally for me, I'd rather pay for a service than get one for free if I'm using it on this level... I want the company to be there, especially because it's streaming from their site... If they're making money, they'll keep building up their system.. IMHO.

 

[Kevin Michael]

Bubble Guru or Site Pal? My vote is for Bubble Guru

Site Pal has been around for a while now, and still, no matter what I read or hear about them, all I can think is how much I hate those cartoon Site Pal characters.

They just don't add a level of professionalism to a website unless it's for kids. In my opinion, they are just silly.

Not that Bubble Guru is the best thing in the world either, but I do think the personalized video message aspect is a much better idea then cartoons.

They just seem more real, and I think my visitors feel better about having someone actually relating to them.

I signed up for a free Bubble Guru account yesterday, and while the creation process was really easy and fast, what I really like is the way the video messages float above my webpage and then disappear when my message is done .

Makes finding a spot on page to place it a none issue.

Also, updating my messages took only 30 seconds!...really, I'm not kidding you. It was really fast.

 

[Linda Buquet]

When I blogged about Bubble Guru and said Shawn should use one on his blog to alert people that Affiliate Summit was about to sell out - he did.

He gots lots of complaints. People didn't like the way the bubble folowed them as they read and thought it got in the way. But of course they were all from marketers like US.

I would think Joe consumer might like it. I still think it's pretty cool but needs to be on the right type of blog.

 

[ayushpant]

Hey there,

While I really liked bubble guru myself, but I have to completely disagree with you here. As Linda said, Sitepal is really for the right kind of websites. Although, an average consumer might love to see your face, but having a professional animated character with your voice could do the same job.

Also, I tested sitepal for something on ebay. There was this product that I had a really hard time selling. With Sitepal, I sold it right away. And, I didn't even use my own voice, I used one of their computer generated voice. So, in a way it worked perfectly for me.

Also, you never know if people don't like your face (I know they won't like mine ), but they won't mind the computer character as much ...On the other hand, people might get irritated about that cartoon character. Like you did. So, it really depends on person to person. But, a majority of us like both.

As I mentioned in my eBay example, Sitepal works. I had listed the item two times, it didn't sell. For the third time after integrating Sitepal, I had as many as 13 bids.

My suggestion is that before totally trashing a product, we should try it out and see how it works. For example, use Sitepal for 14 days, use BubbleGuru for 14 days. See which one helps you getting better conversions. And, go with the one that benefits your website the most.

They just don't add a level of professionalism to a website unless it's for kids. In my opinion, they are just silly.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes I think each could work and for different audiences one may outperform another.

 

[Teli]

Things like Site Pal and Guru Bubble are reasons I browse the web with my speakers on mute.

Personally, I find it incredibly annoying/troublesome to browse the web and then, all of sudden, hearing music or sound blasting in my speakers (sometimes I forget to mute and sometimes I'm listening to iTunes).

What makes it worse is that I tend to have quite a few tabs open at one time (10-20+) and I'll open links I want to read later in a background tab...if one of those tabs suddenly starts talking or making sounds, it's a pain to figure out which one it is and stop it.

But that's just me.

Like you said, it probably depends on the audience, but most people do find music/audio they cannot control to be rather annoying. In some events, if it wears on too long or cannot be stopped, they'll just leave. (Chances are your Site Pal presentation was fairly short?)

~ Teli

 

[Kevin Michael]

MUTE response

Whether or not a Bubble Guru or Site Pal automatically launches is really the creators or marketers choice.

These are just tools and it's up to the users to decide how to best use them.

So I hear what your saying about being annoyed with pop-ups...but let's imagine a Bubble Guru was set to play when someone clicks on a link for more information.

As long as it was clearly identified to the visitor that a person would respond by clicking this link, then this could be a very powerful tool.

And on the aspect of users faces for Bubble Guru as opposed to a Site Pal cartoon, maybe you should ask a pretty friend to help you out

Also, I didn't mean to trash Site Pal, I just meant chartoon characters don't work for me...but like everyone here, I agree about trying both and seeing which one get's a better response.

My personal choice is to have a Bubble Guru launch on a link...like, "Hear about our great offers"

 

[Ray Rippey]

Well, my company put it (SitePal) on our website as an experiment... on the first page, and it automatically starts speaking.... it is fairly short and to the point. It does not just sit around and talk about the product.. it introduces the web site and suggests places to go, where to look at our movies (of our software), where to signup for our newsletter, how to navigate the site, and says our 800# and to call to purchase or get a free demo.

So far, after 2 weeks, we've noticed that the people that signed up for the download filled out the form completely. And that means more qualified leads. I would rather have 3 qualified leads a week than 100 bogus leads.

We purchased it for a year (after the trial is over). We'll see, it was only a couple hundred. I did not use our voice, I used a computerized womans voice which is not bad.

But I'm only using it as an introduction, not for the main product. I use camtasia for my program so people can see how the program works.

I do agree on certain websites it could look kind of hokey (is that how you spell hokey?)

Of course we ask our customers for feedback.. so far nothing bad... but it's fairly new...

We'll see!

 

[ayushpant]

And on the aspect of users faces for Bubble Guru as opposed to a Site Pal cartoon, maybe you should ask a pretty friend to help you out
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C'mon. I am not that ugly, and I'd rather take the credit for my work than someone else!!!