In e-commerce, talking avatars, also known as virtual humans, mimic frontline advocates to provide information on products or services. Previous studies have revealed that a talking avatar induced higher perceptions of social presence than a text-based web advertisement. Moreover, the presence of a non-interactive talking avatar can increase website trust and patronage intention. However, little attention has been paid to the moderating effect of user gender on these effects.

In order to reduce social uncertainty and ambiguity, consumers search for peripheral cues that can boost their sense of familiarity when encountering new environments. For example, visual and verbal aspects of body gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, voice tones, and speech prosody can be perceived as reassurance signals. In line with this theory, non-interactive talking avatars endowed with human voices can enhance perceptions of information credibility, website trust, and patronage intention in female shoppers.

Using Talking Avatar software such as Demo Creator, Voki, and Animaker, users can animate talking characters with lip-sync functions according to the audio file they input. The software allows users to edit the video presentation and add texts and captions to give it a more personalized touch.

Moreover, the software can turn texts into audio using its text-to-speech engine and provide professional voice over services for an additional cost. Its virtual human feature enables users to make a photo-like talking avatar with the real image of themselves, a friend, or even a famous person. Lastly, the tool offers an easy-to-use interface with drag and drop features to simplify video editing and creation.    talking avatar