Interview with Owen Lin

I am a G 粉 (Google Fans; 粉 Fěn is the Chinese character for English word “fan”) and I am interested in trying out all kinds of new web 2.0 products. - Owen Lin

That’s how Owen Lin describes himself. I first got to know Owen via Florian. Owen is one of the supporters of Shanghai Web Analytics Wednesday.  Recently his guest posts of “Understanding Google Analytics codes on Douban.com” on 我爱水煮鱼 get very popular in the WA field - about 3000 visit within one day.

“When I wrote this piece, I never expected it to be popular. Instead, I thought it would be a ‘niche’ one that only very few Google Analytics users will be interested…I was a little ’shocked’ and then realizes the need for web analytics contents/knowledge is so tremendous in China today…”

Recently, in a blog contest to show how well you can use Google applications run by Google China, Owen won 2 titles of “Google 牛人“ out of total 12 (and two iPod Touches!!). That‘s a very cool self-prove of being a G 粉。:)

In this very relaxing interview, we talked about 2 hours until the waitress reminded us the cafe closing time.

Shanghai WA: Could you tell us about your background and how did you get your feet wet with web analytics?

Owen: I was “不误正业” (bú wù zhèng yè, meaning: to work on something else other than what you suppose to work on) during my university period. I don’t like my major mechanical engineering and got intrigued about Internet after I read a book about web page design in my sophomore. Later I got my first job with a flash work I designed.

My second job was in a trading company. My manager really understood the value of search engine optimization (SEO) back in 04/05. We invested in pretty expensive SEO tools. It was the first time I had to look close at Google, and embrace its “open and don’t act evil” ethics. But we didn’t have the concept of “conversion” or “web analytics” at that time, just used some click-stream tools to track visits.

Shanghai WA: I know you worked at Dianping.com before. How was that?

Owen: Mr. Zhang Tao offered me a job at Dianping.com in Shanghai after an video interview in 07. I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn him. He is my best teacher. It was the time I started to get closed to web analytics and data. I was basically the only guy focuses on web analytics.

I am now working at the online marketing department of a hospital.

Shanghai WA: So you’ve been working at WA for about 3 years. What web analytics packages/tools have you used?

Owen: I use Google Analytics. I think it is a very powerful free tool. Most of us are using GA with its default setting. But I like to test and trial its new features or functions that are not straightforward.

Shanghai WA: How do you find these features?

Owen: I turn to the Help pages. I like to think of ways to keep improving the data accuracy. For example, GA’s default setting won’t tell us what traffic from Baidu are organic vs. paid. I also tried to use the rename feature to retrieve information that are not available on the URL.

Shanghai WA: What are the KPIs in your work?

Owen: At Dianping, we tracked conversion rate from visits to registered member.  Now, we use the number of online query as KPI.

Shangahi WA: Do you think it is challenging for people to listen to WA advice?

Owen: I don’t think so. We ran some ads campaign with one of the big advertising publisher networks and got very lousy result. When I show the data to my manager, he accepted my suggestions.

I think the key issue is to have data to show. If you don’t set up the right tracking environment to collect the data, it is hard to convince people.

Shangha WA:Do you know any Chinese WA vendors? How are they doing?

Owen: I hear of tools like 51.La which are popular among webmasters. I hardly use any other analytics tools after I started using Google Analytics in 2006.

Shanghai WA: What do you think of GA or other vendors opportunities in China?

Owen: I don’t really know. But I see a trend that more and more online marketers start to pay attention web analytics, and want to learn more about it. The fact that so many people are interested in my post about Google Analytics codes is an example.

In my recent recruitment experience for online marketer/web analyst, I am disappointed at the candidates I’ve interviewed: most of them don’t know what is web analytics, and a great part of them don’t know about Google Analytics, as well as a lot of web 2.0 products/social media, such as twitter, which are important to online marketing.

Shanghai WA: Yea, we didn’t expect so many people would come to the first Shanghai WAW event. That’s a sign. Are there any other training about WA in Shanghai?

Owen: Not many. In fact, one of my current focus is to train our team on web analytics. In the past, they bought ads but didn’t track the result. They didn’t have any visibility on how they were doing.

Shanghai WA: What are the key skills/attribute to be successful WA professional?

Owen: 3 parts: 1) understand business goal; 2) have basic knowledge of HTML/CSS, able to read the source code of a page; 3) have an open mind set and understand Internet user behavior, especially your targeting demography.

Shanghai WA: Who do you think we should interview?

Owen: I am interested in learning more about WA in different industries. It’d be great if you can talk to Dave about e-commerce web analytics.

Shanghai WA: Ideally, who would you like us to invite to Shanghai WAW monthly event?

Owen: As now I am running online campaigns but our conversion is offline. I see  KFC is running a lot of campaign online. I am curious about how they are tracking the conversion. It will be very interesting.

Thanks, Owen!

后记：

1) 最近我们打算采访一些在web analytics 领域的“先锋”人物，主要希望给更多对网络分析感兴趣的朋友提供一些借鉴；如果你们知道这个领域的“大牛”，希望我们去采访，请一定要告诉我们。留言和email都可以。

2)在写这篇post之前，我也在挣扎到底用中文写好还是英文好。英文的优势是我们可以和更多的人交流。 欢迎告诉我你们的想法。

3)上海WAW是要继续办下去的；我迫切感到我们学习培训的途径之少。大家如果有什么具体的话题或者问题想讨论，也欢迎随时告诉我们。

Related posts:

1. Email Interview with Sidney Song
2. Phone Interview with Florian Pihs
3. Interview with Mars Ren
4. Shanghai WAW 2009年8月 聚会
5. Interview with Dave Zheng, Web Analyst in E-commerce

Tagged as: Conversion rate, dianping, Google, Google Analytics, KPI, WA vendor