Google Data Studio

Data Studio-The most advanced Google Analytics reporting and dashboarding tool

Google Data Studio has proved its worth with time, being the finest tool providing exclusive features that the whole world of analytics was longing for. The unique features like data connectors, interactive reports have made creating automated and engaging reports possible. With the flexible and customizable dashboards reporting has been so easy with the visually aesthetic reports. Google Data Studio has provided a very creative solution that turns your data into informational, simple-to-understand reports through visualization.

With the reports being easily able to pull in very effective graphs and visual charts, it helps you derive critical insights much easier than ever. Therefore, giving more productive time for you to derive more meaningful and actionable insights. Since comparing information and data from various channels is made possible with GDS, it allows you to compare performances that are between different channels and provides flexibility to the process of reporting.

You will then be spending much lesser time handling data in various spreadsheets and be spending more time analyzing data to get actionable insights with this splendid tool.

Data Studio has a plethora of features that can take your reporting to the next level, here are some of the elements that we really believe you should be aware of. You can include them in every report of yours to enhance them drastically.

Blending Data with Left Outer Join

The majority of us have already used data studio for the purpose of using its basic features to automate reports by consolidating your various sources that are visually strong dashboards. You will get a lot of information to blend and tweak data sources when you are trying to create reports that include comparing and analyzing data from different channels. But, at times, the data is not the same as it is in your source. Don’t worry about that, there is a good explanation for that as well!

You can use something as simple as ‘Date’ in Dimension to amalgamate sources precisely. However, the process becomes a tad bit complex and complicated if you are planning on blending data sources and using a metric that is available in only one of the data sources. The sources with the required additional metric should be in the left always while blending as the Google Data studio’s data blending feature only permits blending through a Left Outer Join operation.

This for sure means that resulting values will include metrics and roots only that appear in the left-most data sources in the blend.

5 calculated field formulas for every report

Now we bring 5 calculated field formulas for every report for you. Calculated fields are the same as any formula you may have used in MS Excel. You can make custom formulas to create calculated fields. The formula will perform actions on other existing fields in the data source for the purpose of creating new virtual metrics/columns.

Creating new metrics

You can create your own metrics easily by adding the formula for your metric into the calculated fields. To give you an example: to pull branded queries in the report.

REGEXP_Match(Query,”.*brandname1.*| .*brandname2.*| .*brandname3.*”)

Case Statement

Comparing, classifying and analyzing data can be a very tedious job that consumes a lot of time. The most efficient way to compare and classify data for you is the ‘case statements’. The example given below groups the site data, that can be further analyzed for YoY/MoM comparisons.

Case

WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT(Landing Page,”/home”) THEN “Total Organic Visits – Home”

WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT(Landing Page,”/women”) THEN “Total Organic Visits – Women”

WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT(Landing Page,”/products”) THEN “Total Organic Visits -Product Pages”

WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT(Landing Page,”/blog”) THEN “Total Organic Visits – Blog”

ELSE “Other”

END

Because the ‘case statement’ is created as a metric you will be able to reuse the report as per the requirement.

Creating % Change Columns with Sorting/Filter Enable

Measuring changes provides you with an understanding of the performance, the difference between the old and the new value when expressed in the percentage gives a clear understanding while comparing values over a period of time. The Google Data Studio has included an easy to implement features that calculate per cent variation over time.

As it is an in-built feature, there is a limitation with implementing sort to any column that is calculating the percentage change. However, you can always create a ‘calculated field’ that does the same job for you and overcome the limitation with filter and sort.

(New Value – Old Value)/Old Value * make sure you select display value as per cent

Removing Query Parameters

Let’s say you have many parameterized URLs made for a page, then you have a quick and ensured solution that can count for metric values without making changes to the actual data in the data source. The double slash ‘//’ in Google Data Studio is an escape to this formula to remove? Parameters: REGEXP_REPLACE (Landing Page, ‘\?.+’,””)

Advanced Date Range

The advanced date range feature permits you to customize dates to make flexible rolling dates for your dashboard. The dates can be configures for the current date range you would want to set up in the dashboard. You can set a comparison date too. Both the comparison and current date will roll automatically and setup your dashboard for the next report.

To give you an example, you can easily create date ranges like “last fifteen days from yesterday” or “last 40 days from last week” or you can even compare the “current 30 days to last 30 days, aligned by the day of the week”.

Once you begin to the options to select a start and end date in the settings (advanced). You can customize the rolling dates as per the requirements.

Graphs & table view mode features

The ability of the data studio to make interactive and engaging reports adds additional power to the tool with the visual representation of data.

The feature is quite simple to add and enhances the reports by selecting the ‘Apply Filter’ checkbox in interactions. Checking the box permits the viewer of the report to click on the chart and apply that particular dimension as a filter to other charts on the page.

Interactions > Apply Filter

Device Types: Desktop | Mobile | Tablet

Device Types: Desktop

Device Types: Mobile

Interactions > Enable Sorting

Try to create interactive reports by enabling sort on your charts, drive meaningful insights by using sort by on any metrics added to the report.

We sincerely hope that these features will help you transform your customizable reports into beautiful and aesthetic dashboards and there are plenty of other interesting features the Google Data Studio provides to add to your reports. Make sure you discover the best options for your reports as you implement all these features on your creative dashboards.

Good Luck to you! We really hope that you perform well and gain success. Make sure you read our previous blogs thoroughly. They will give you much more awareness in the field you are interested in, and will help you boost your progress (drastically at that!).

That’s all for today! We hope you liked the blog and found the content useful. Stay tuned for more content like this.

See you in our next blog!