Animated characters exist on many websites with the scope of increasing their degree of interactivity. Animations are made with specialized software, commonly used file format being GIF (graphic interchange format) or Flash.

By adding a voice to the animated character the advertising power will be increased. You can use the voice to present a certain service or product, an online course or to guide visitors to navigate your website. The animated characters with voice can bring new perspectives to your web site popularity and traffic by increasing them.

There are many programs that will allow you to define a certain speaking character suitable for a given purpose. These programs run on your desktop operating systems or on a web server and can be free or paid. You can create a static speaking character or a dynamic one. The dynamic speaking characters have artificial intelligence and are able to answer the questions asked by your website visitors.

In this way, they can promote your products, assure an online technical assistance for your visitors or they can transform your visitors in customers by engaging them in online shopping actions. You will be capable to customize the character appearance, voice and behaviour. Your site visitors or customers will be able to "talk" to the animated speaking character usually through a web form, because most of them are created based on a text to speech engine.

Flash-animated speaking characters provide a good graphical quality and many voice customization options, as well as an easy integration in any website design. For example, you can try for free the services offered by SitePal, which will allow you to create and customize a speaking character using a very friendly web interface. You will have then a better insight regarding the advantages induced to your website by the presence of a speaking character.