For months you’ve been casing a Gucci shoulder bag online, adding it to your virtual cart, only to close the tab before buying it. One weekend, lounging in your pajamas, you decide to go for it, and back you go to the Gucci website.

In an office building on the waterfront in Jersey City, N.J., a yellow cartoon figure roughly the shape of a bowling pin — that’s you! — appears on a customer service agent’s computer screen.

Your avatar joins a cluster of identically shaped avatars in this Gucci call center: green, blue, and yellow creatures, all with gleaming googly eyes and their country’s flag pinned on their torsos. Some, but not all, have hair.

The screen is displaying technology from Powerfront. Through its flagship product, Inside, businesses — most of them luxury brands — can see, chat with and track online shoppers. The program allows Powerfront’s clients to treat shoppers as if they were in a bricks-and-mortar store.