Take your reporting to new heights with Google Data Studio

3 min read

Have you ever dreamed of consolidating your different digital analytics and reporting tools into one simple report, or to automate the process of collecting and analysing your commercial reporting, if so then Google Data Studio (GDS) may be the answer.

More productive use of your time

If you would benefit from spending more time analysing your reports and using your insights to implement change, and less time handling data, playing with spreadsheets and combining data into readable reports, then embracing this amazing tool is a no-brainer in our minds.

Combine multiple data sources

Allowing you to effortlessly combine your Google Analytics data with stats from your social networks, your spreadsheets, data feeds from Hubspot, ad platforms, and Mailchimp, to name only a few of the available data sources.

What is Google Data Studio

GDS is part of Google’s Marketing Platform, a collection of products for advertising and analytics, providing a powerful tool for turning data into dashboards and reports. Previously seen as an intimidating enterprise-class solution, it’s a new interface, with flexible connectors and some great free learning resources makes it accessible for everyone.

Data Studio is Google’s reporting solution which gives you everything you need to turn your data into informational, easy-to-understand reports through visualisation.

How much does it cost?

At the moment, Google Data Studio is offered completely free by Google as part of its Google Cloud Platform offering. Any additional cost comes when using third party connectors to pull in data from platforms not owned by Google such as Salesforce, Facebook, Mailchimp etc. These costs can start from as little as $39 per month depending on the type of connector used. We recommend using Supermetrics.

Why use data studio

Data and analytics are a key aspect of digital transformation. However we are often overloaded with data believing the more we have of it, the more we can learn from it. Google Data Studio allows you to filter the woods from the trees organising and prioritising your marketing data. Giving you powerful insight to make marketing and business decisions.

Flexibility

What we love the most is the simplicity at which it is possible to pull in data from an array of sources, over 500 to be precise, you can see for yourself here, and can even as a last resort import data from any JSON, CSV or XML with a URL or from your Google Drive.

For free reporting, it is quite simply the best we have ever seen.

Visual

GDS is highly customisable, making it easy to tell your own data story with visual reporting which can be elegantly branded. Plus, you can insert dynamic controls enabling users to display and filter the data they want to see.

Product highlights

To summarise some of the most impressive features, GDS allows you to;

Consolidate your spreadsheets, analytics accounts, marketing tools, and more into a single report
Transform raw data into useful information
Intuitively visualise metrics to display on dashboards and reports
Efficiently analyse your data and identify trends
Share the results with your team to encourage data-driven decisions.

Experience

We’ve now used the platform for a few months to deliver our clients digital marketing reports, and we’ve had some great feedback and results.

Our client Leon Palmer, Marketing Manager at the Møller Institute says “The new GDS reports are really clear and simple to understand, a much easier format to digest and it’s great to be able customise them on-the-fly. Plus they save us significant time with our internal reporting procedures, so we’re really happy.”

Demo

Here’s a quick demo report we’ve created to give you a little flavour for what is possible.

Resources

Next steps

To make the most of the platform, we can help to ensure that your goals are being tracked correctly in Google Analytics and other platforms, to help provide you with accurate data and to implement the best reporting metrics.

To get going yourself visit datastudio.google.com or we would be happy to help setup your account, your data feeds and your reports.

Get in touch

Simon Wheeler
Managing Director