Phone Interview with Florian Pihs

Florian at Shanghai WAW on Aug. 19

Florian 对于北京的朋友应该比较熟悉，他早在2007年就在北京首先发起Web Analytics Wednesday的聚会，现在差不多2年了，WAW已经成为WA爱好者每月期待的聚会。今年WAW来到上海，和他的大力支持不无相关。

Florian 来自德国，他曾经在IBM工作；2001年互联网泡沫破裂以后，他去到了香港科技大学就读MBA课程。毕业后，他决定留在亚洲发展——他曾在易观国际负责市场调查工作，然后加入MRM World负责建立网络分析团队，现在为网络战略计划总监。

我们是通过Skype做这次采访的。Florian有着德国人的严谨，一问一答，绝不跑题，搞得喜欢天南地北的我还有点无所适从。和我们之前采访过的Owen, Dave 和Mars做in-house的WA不一样，Florian和Sidney属于广告公司的WA，他们所接触的客户的行业要更广，面临的WA的问题更多在于SEM而非网站performance。我个人认为作为广告公司的Analyst是更幸运的，因为他们可能更少面临需要pitch 大老板重视WA的困难，他们的挑战更在于如何帮助客户发布有创意有效果的广告，确定KPIs, 并且能准确的跟踪衡量；同时，他们也需要为客户提供一些电子营销方面的战略建议。

采访了Florian以后，我的第一个action是加入了Yahoo！Web Analytics Group并且定制接收讨论的邮件。这个领域那些大名鼎鼎的人物都会在这个group发言，还有很多有经验的朋友分享tips，讨论问题，绝对是站在巨人的肩膀的一个学习机会。我强烈建议习惯阅读英文资料的朋友也加入。

下面是采访原文，中文翻译版本在此。谢谢Echo！

Shanghai WA: Could you share with us your background and experience?

Florian: After getting a degree in Business Information Systems, I was working for IBM as a IT specialist with a focus on web content management. After the Dot Com bust in 2003, I joined the HKUST MBA program, based in Hongkong, which was my first experience of Asia at the time. After graduation, I decided to build my career in China, started building my China expertise at Analysys International, a local market research firm. Later an alumni of HKUST Business school recruited my to build up the Web Analytics team at MRM Worldswide. They were looking for an analytics leader with research and analysis experience. After leading MRM’s Web Analytics efforts for 2 years, I am now Director of Planner, Strategy and Innovation, looking after the digital initiatives of our clients.

Shanghai WA: When did you first get your feet wet with web analytics?

Florian: May 2007 after I joined MRM Worldwide. My previous work were not directly related to web analytics, but general marketing research and analysis.

Shanghai WA: You are an active evangelist for “strategic web analytics”. How do you define it?

Florian: My daily job is about helping clients to plan and develop strategies on web, mobile and social media. One of the most important steps in the process is define SMART objectives, to measure the performance of KPI’s, and to build actionable recommendations bases on our analysis of the actual performance.

“Strategic” means we look beyond the clickstream data to build the recommendations. Avinash Kaushik calls it web analytics 2.0, I always found the “2.0″ moniker boring. So I call it “Strategic Web Analytics” instead.

Shanghai WA: So do you recommend that kinds of tool to your clients?

Florian: No. The tool is not a problem. Most of our clients already have the tool installed. But they either don’t know how to use it or how to interpreter the data.

Shanghai WA: You organized the first Web Analytics Wedsneday event in China, what have motivated you to start it in Beijing?

Florian: In 2007, there are very few people know about web analytics, and there were no related forums in China for people to exchange ideas. And then I learned about the exciting meetups of Web Analytics Wed. (WAW) on the WA Yahoo! group. So I thought of initiate it in Beijing.

At first, it was a few friends sharing ideas when dinner together, and it was not a regular monthly event. The first dinner is around Nov. 2007. And later, more and more friends join us and it become monthly meetup.

Shanghai WA: We know that top fee-based vendors like Omniture, WebTrends and free one like Google Analytics have come to China. Which vendor (including Chinese ones) do you think will be succesful in Chinese market?

Florian: Interesting question. It depends on how you define “success”: by number of installation, or by revenue? Google Analytics of course has the largest user basis, and Omniture have big clients in travel and IT sector, Webtrends seems to succeed in the telecom industry. There are quite a few local vendors, some have even presented at our WAE, but their business seems to be small compared to the big 3 global vendors. I don’t know for sure, tough, since there is no official market share data.

The web analytics market just starts in China, a lot of site owners don’t have any experience with it. I would recommend the small and medium site owners start from the free tools, try to use it as much as possible. As long as they keep looking at the data and trying to find out the insights behind the data, they will be rewarded. They don’t need to buy fee-based tool until web analytics has become business critical so they can justify the costs. That also means that they will have a existing, experienced team of analysts that can make use of the advanced features of the commercial tools. That is the critical part. Without a smart team, any tool is useless.

The game is going to play for while before we know who is the market leader.

Shanghai WA: What are the must-have skills/attributes that are important to be successful in web analtyics field? Are there any training?

Florian: Enthusiasm (the most important one), interest in technologies, intelligence and critical thinking, basic knowledge of HTML/Java Script is a plus. In the end a prospective analyst has to be comfortable with data and able to interpret data. I don’t think statistics background is necessary as long as you can understand the meaning behind the data. People with background as media buyers or market research analysts have some of these skills and have adopted well in our team. There is also a great discussion on the Web Analytics Yahoo Group about the same topic leading to a blog post by Anil Batra. I think all the points are true in China as well.

Omniture has the 2-day workshop which is pretty expensive. They are avaliable in both Shanghai and Beijing now. Ang Google Conversion University has very good online videos, they are very good, especially when you are preparing for the GAIQ test.

Shanghai WA: I know you are a big supporter of Avanish’s 90/10 rule. How would you suggest us to convince our boss to invest more on People?

Florian: Good question. :) Your boss can send you to trainings including web analytics wednesday, should allow you to go out to meet people, buying related books to encourage more reading. Of course, you should also invest more personal time to “self educate” through reading blogs. Start and writing a blog is also a good way to learn too. It is a platform that you can try and test various tools. Writing a blog post can drive your thinking as well as research.

Shanghai WA: Who would you recommend us to interview?

Florian: There are quite some people, such as people from the Google Authorized Consultant Company in Shanghai LexAD and people from vendors like Omniture, Webtrends, Google, CMZZ etc. Good luck with these interviews, they are a great idea to introduce the industry thought leaders to the community.