If you consider reporting to be an important part of your business, be sure to familiarize yourself with Google Data Studio.
Compiling reports has always been a challenge for businesses and there are probably few people who do this professionally and with passion. Confusing charts, scroll tables, etc., not only take a lot of time to research and compile, but they also don’t satisfy the employer and it always seems like something is missing in the middle. But day by day, various tools are available to us that make things easier. Google Data Studio is one of these very efficient tools. With Google Data Studio, you can extract comprehensive statistical reports for your business in the field of digital marketing, and it relieves you of the challenge of preparing reports. What exactly is Google Data Studio and what is its use? How to work with it? In this article, we answer these questions.
Table of Contents
What is Google Data Studio?
Google Data Studio, also known as GDS, is a completely free tool from the Google services collection that allows you to get personalized and regular reports. Working with this tool is not particularly complicated, and you can share your reports with other members of the organization. For example, with Data Studio, you can check key performance indicators, specific patterns, etc., and even compare their performance over specific periods. Google Data Studio is not only limited to numbers, in fact, with various charts and graphs in a visual format, it makes the report easier to understand so that you can compare the statistics at a glance.
What are the advantages of using Google Data Studio?
- Sending and displaying data in real-time and the ability to connect to 220 different tools
- Full control and customization of reports and charts
- Ability to display reports with different filters
- Use advanced formulas such as metrics and calculated fields
How to create a Google Data Studio account?
You do not need to create an additional account to access Google Data Studio. It is enough to have a Google account and go to datastudio.google.com and log in. Preferably use the same account with which you are connected to Google Analytics and Search Console. Because later you have to connect these accounts to Data Studio and use their data. As soon as you enter this address, you will enter a page that is similar to Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Google Docs. This is the dashboard page of Google Data Studio, where general information can be seen.
Getting to know the main parts of Google Data Studio
In Google Data Studio, there are main and important sections that you should be familiar with for the initial entry.
Reports
In this section, you can access all the available reports (this section is exactly like the workbook in Excel.) In addition, you can specify who each report belongs to.
Data Sources
In this section, you have access to the list of all sources whose data is to be sent to Google Data Studio. As we said before, Data Studio connects to more than 250 tools and takes their data.
Among the most important tools that connect to Google Data Studio:
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- Google search console
- BigQuery
- YouTube Analytics
- PostgreSQL
- Search Ads 360
- Display & Video 360
If you use Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you need to connect each View and Property separately for each. For example, if you have 3 views for 3 domains in Google Analytics, you must connect 3 separate and different sources for each in Data Studio. Of course, don’t worry, this process is not that complicated.
Explorer
The Explorer is the part that is mostly experimental, that is, it allows you to implement different factors on the report without making any changes to the main report, and if it works, insert it into the main report. In this case, you can make changes in charts and graphs without worry.
For example, let’s say that Data Studio shows you a table of your most popular landing pages in order, in this case, you think to yourself that if you add something like speed to it, what would the order be like? In Explorer, you can perform this test and if the result is significant, enter it in the main report.
Gallery (report gallery)
In this section, there is a collection of ready report templates and models that you can choose for anyone you want.
Connect to Data
This is the part of Google Data Studio for adding data sources. Those are the tools whose data you want to enter into Data Studio and prepare a report from them. Our recommendation is to start by adding two basic tools, namely Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
How to prepare a report in Google Data Studio
At the top of this page, you can see the middle part of the reports you have already created, and on the left side of this row there is a positive sign, if you click on it, you can start creating your desired report.
Connect to data source tools.
The first thing we need to create a report in Data Studio is to connect our data source to Google Data Studio. This source can be Google Analytics, Search Console, or any other tool. For this purpose, from the blank page that we opened in the previous step, we must click on Create new data source, which is located in the lower right corner of the page. After you click, you will be presented with a menu of data sources that you can connect to the report.
In this section, you can connect to all kinds of resources that we mentioned before, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Sheets, Google Ads, etc. In this example, to use the model data, we will use the demo version of Google Analytics, which is open to anyone, and we will explain how to connect this tool. The connection is the same for other tools. Once you have selected the data source, click Add to Report to add the source.
View the trend (Trendline)
Let’s say we want to create another graph that shows conversion rates over time. Just like before, we right-click on the graph we have and select the Duplicate option. After the Data tab, we search for the conversion rate metric. Drag and drop the metric you find in the previous metric to replace it.
Since we don’t need this chart to be cumulative, we disable the Cumulative tick that we activated before. Now, because we need to observe the trend, we select the type of trend, such as linear or exponential, from the Style tab. With this method, you can have a better picture of the data.
Creating an interactive report with a time filter in Google Data Studio
The first feature that our report should have is that the user can change the period in it. For this, we must use the Date Control filter. From the top bar, click on the date control (1), which is like a calendar icon. With this work, a box is created, the best place to place it is the Header that we created at the beginning of the work. From the sidebar in the corner of the page, change its color so that it is clear in the dark background.
Now anyone looking at your report can click on the created time box, and a calendar will open where the user can easily select the time frame they want and see the results in the report.
Creating an interactive report with a control filter in Google Data Studio
In the Edit mode of the Google Data Studio report, there are other interesting features that you can add to the report. We want to create a menu in this section so that the user can view the source traffic of different mediums separately by selecting from this menu. For this, you need to use filter control. This filter is accessible from the top bar and has a funnel-like icon.
By default, Dimension is set to Medium. But we want to change it to source medium. As before, we search for the Data section and place it on Dimension by drag and drop.
Now, if we need more filters, we can right-click on the previous filter we created and duplicate it. For example, we set this filter to Device Category so that the user of the report can view the traffic based on the type of device of the contacts.
If we want another filter, we do the same Duplicate again and this time we set the Dimension to user type so that the user of the report can check the traffic based on the type of site user, for example, see the results for new and old users separately.
Share reports in Google Data Studio
Now that we have created a complete interactive report, it is time to share it with the team members. You can do this in several different ways.
Download the report
The first option is to download the report as a PDF file. For this, you need to click on the download icon at the top of the page, a pop-up will be displayed to you with different options, for example, you can create a password for the report or change the background of the report.
Use of email
The next option is to send the report via email. Find the clock-like icon at the top of the screen and click on it. In this case, a pop-up will be displayed where you can set the email address of the other person, the email sending interval, etc.
Shareable link
And finally, to share this report, you can create a special link for it and send it to anyone you want. For this, you need to click on the link icon at the top of the page, which will open a pop-up containing a link. Send the link to anyone who can download the report.
In addition, you can share files just like Google Drive files. For this, you must click on the share icon at the top of the page. A pop-up will appear for you, which you have probably seen when sharing a file in Google Drive or Google Sheets. Here is a shareable link where you can enter different emails so people can access that link.