Web analytics nerds are people too

So there I am, reading Web Analytics Demystified while travelling on a bus towards the City first thing on a very dull, Baltic-cold morning, getting a little bored of conversion calculations and such like.

I’m about to close the book and grab some zees when I see the section  detailing how useful analytics tools can be in measuring search success ratios.

Riveting stuff. Not.

To be fair, I’ve sat through some blindingly boring (poke-pens-in-your-eyes dull) presentations recently, so compared to them, the book’s like eating fire.

But, hey…I’ve read Jim Sterne, Avinash Kaushik and now I’m working on Eric T. Petersen. There must be a point when I can stop, right? (Especially given that I’m a content person and I’m only doing analytics because…well, don’t ask why.)

So, call me a well-informed amateur who only needs to know so much to get the job done and Petersen et al have furnished me with the books to learn so-much.

There I am on the bus thinking I’d gotten to the so-much-is-enough stage; thinking these guys who get geeky about web analytics are probably a bit boring and maybe their self-promoting language is a bit much (“high touch strategic consulting services” ; “thought leadership” etc).

And then, just as I’m ready to rest my head against the freezing cold bus window and take a snooze, Eric T., wakes me the hell up.

How?

He does it on page 186 in an example of a search term that has no results. It is thus:

<Search for: Animal chin>

And suddenly I’m transported to my teenage skateboarding 1980s past.

What’s Animal Chin?

It was a skateboarding (marketing) video featuring a plot about the search for a fictional character named Animal Chin. The video was called: The Search for Animal Chin.

The mere mention of it — and with a clever wit –  made my day.

Which just goes to show two things:

1. Online’s great but real life gets you fired up so to be successful the first has to relate to/help the second  (with the exception of online network gaming which is real life).

Online professionals often forget that simple fact when they design websites and post content.

2. Even analytics nerds have known good times.

(NB: Here’s the Wikipedia explanation of the video. Its promotion was so-called viral marketing before its day, aka word-of-mouth promotion:  my group of skateboarding mates were desperate to get a copy and when we did we watched it over and over again.)