What is Google Data Studio?
A brief introduction to my favorite data visualization tool.
Google Data Studio is a free service for easily visualizing any kind of data.
If you’ve ever wanted to build live, engaging, interactive reports with Google Analytics, AdWords, Google Sheets, CSVs, SQL databases, (or almost any data source), you can do it with Google Data Studio.
Google Data Studio can take multiple data sources and normalizes them in an easy-to-use interface that allows you to build reports as easily as you build a powerpoint.
You don’t need to be a data scientist or coder to get started. Everything is set up with a nice clean graphical user interface. It guides you through the process of connecting a new data source, and then easily enables you to turn that data into a wide range of chart types.
Here’s a snapshot from within the report building interface:
This report was built to replace a client’s monthly AdWords reporting. Before Google Data Studio, they were manually logging into AdWords, exporting their data, putting it into excel to clean it and generate charts and then pulling those charts into powerpoint.
In case you didn’t notice, that’s a lot of work…
Now all they do is open this dashboard. That’s it. Literally one step and they’re done. This report collates and calculates everything for them.
There are dozens of data visualization tools out there designed to simplify people’s business intelligence processes. Many are more powerful than Google Data Studio. But, all of them have a steep learning curve, a complex processes for assigning user access and many are expensive. But, most importantly, none of them integrate as well into the Google Suite. In my experience 95% of clients using other Google services are better off using GDS than the alternatives.
If you want more examples of reports, or need support managing your Google Data Studio workflow take a look at Cottrell Consulting
