Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

I got an email from Jonathan Mendez who "tagged" me ....

"....This was started by Jeff Pulver http://pulverblog.pulver.com/. I don't usually like or participate in these chain ideas but there is an interesting aspect to it since it is blog-centric.  Since I had to choose five people to tag and I don't know many bloggers I thought that I'll tag you all since I obviously respect all of you and would love to know something more about you as well."

The rules are layed out here.  I was trying to figure out how I'm sopposed to respond.

Here are 5 facts about me that maybe you don't know (and this is hard for me to come up with - because I write in stream of consciousness).  I don't think I can compete with Jonathan Mendez because he's got 400 more bottles of red wine in his cellar than I do!

1. Everyone knows I'm a painter as well as a web analyst - but what you don't know .... is that my favorite color is green and my favorite artists from the past are Paul Cezanne  and Edward Manet.  When I was a teenager I painted several still lifes and landscapes in a style similar to Cezanne - but I learned that while I might admire Cezanne, my approach is much different - probably closer to Van Gogh (if a comparison could be made).

2. I don't actually read that many books, but the ones I remember being most influential on me were the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon, The Social Contract by Rousseau, The Lives of the 12 Caesars by Suetonius. The Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky, the Letters of Eugene Delacroix and the Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.   Stuff like that.

3. I spent five years living in the Midwest, in Minneapolis in early to mid 80's and froze my mitts off and actually saw Purple Rain while I was living in Minneapolis.

4. Don't travel much (and don't really like to either) but I did send myself to Paris in 1988 and spent 8 days romping around the Louvre and speaking to American woman (as I don't speak French and hardly anyone else would talk to me).  Around that time I also painted, what I think was one of my finest paintings of that period, After the Bath and Homage to Manet.

5. For a while one of my favorite hobbies was/is alternative medicine and, when I could, would spend money testing out all kinds of alternative health therapies and even biofeedback devices like Wild Divine (which really should be done in Second Life now - but with Wild Divines biofeedback device).

I'm scraping the barrel here.......... and my story is not half as interesting as what Mendez wrote about his life.  I just wish I had the 400 bottles of wine - red wine - I don't care for white wine (I'm a colorist).

OK, by blog tags are......... assuming their all web analytics and seo people (who can link back to me and have blogs) Lee Odden has been supportive of this blog and he's got a cool picture of Aladdin's lamp on his blog today which I just copied  plus Timothy Seward of the Unofficial Google Analytics Blog and a Google Analytics Channel Partner (who I need a favor from - help me understand the problem I wrote about yesterday about getting GA to work in my environment at KMM); I think Tim also should link to this blog.  Also, I got to meet Jason Van Orden a couple of times this year at the NYC Podcasting Meetup and do read his blog - recently I helped Jason out with metrics for Podcasting.   Also Mike Moran of IBM, who was also one of my bosses, has been very helpful and influential in my thinking about calling things the way I see them - as he does - Mike currently manages OmniFind Search Engine for IBM. Also, Mike Levin of Connors Communications and now of HitTail fame  is someone I've bumped in to several times over the last year or two and have enjoyed talking with. Finally, I need to round out this list by naming a woman, Liz Camps, of Green Media Inc.  I just got to know Liz this year and am now also doing some posting to Big Green Blog. Green Media is a small interactive ad agency that's really cool - and I definitely recommend "GM" as I like to call Green Media (but they don't make cars - however they do handle many automotive clients for SEO/SEM and Analytics.

Again, I thank Jonathan Mendez for Tagging me in the first place.