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Talking Website Characters – Annoying or Effective?

Guest post by: Jason Kay

Article Overview: One of the more popular applications that seems to keep popping up on websites everywhere is a talking animated character. These characters, also known as avatars, can be created at a number of different websites, some for free, and offer a unique way for your website visitors to be interactive with your website. But as popular as these avatars are getting, are they effective or are they just one big annoyance?

Talking Website Characters – Annoying or Effective?

One of the more popular applications that seems to keep popping up on websites everywhere is a talking animated character. These characters, also known as avatars, can be created at a number of different websites, some for free, and offer a unique way for your website visitors to be interactive with your website. But as popular as these avatars are getting, are they effective or are they just one big annoyance? Really it all depends on who you talk to as some people will love the lovable little pop up characters that come around and others simply will not. It also depends on a variety of other factors such as:

• Speed of Download: Some people do not have a very fast internet connection. Therefore when they come across a website like yours that has animation it will load slowly. If the animation finally loads up properly the speech may begin to skip a bit and therefore your avatar will never get to do what you intended it to. In this instance the animation can be annoying.

• Speed of Your Site: This goes with the first point. If your website takes a long time to load on your end due to your avatar then the same problems may occur. This type of annoyance is one that will lead to a visitor exiting your website as fast as they made their way onto it. If you are going to use an animated avatar be sure that your hosting company']);"> web hosting company is providing you with enough speed to load your pages adequately.

• What the Avatar Does: If your avatar sings and dances and doesn't really add to the website as a whole this had the tendency to come off as gimmicky and will thus be an annoyance. In order to be effective your avatar should help the visitors find what they are looking for. If your avatar is not interactive then be sure that whatever it says will be helpful and do not put it on a loop. No one wants to hear the same information over and over again. You can have the same avatar saying different things as different pages load up, but again go helpful, not hacky.

• How Your Avatar Looks: Be sure that the look of your avatar goes with the theme of your website. If you have a real estate website then you want to have a professional looking animation. Maybe a man or women dressed in business attire. On the other hand, if you have say a bunny talking all cutesy then your point will likely be lost on an annoyed visitor.

Once again it all comes down to a personal preference and no matter how good you think your avatar is, some people will simply not like an animated talking character on a website. However, you can always experiment with these animations and see what type of reaction you are getting. If you have a place to leave comments on your website, as you should, people will more than likely let you know either way what they think of your avatar. That is one sure way to find out if your talking website character is being effective or annoying.

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