Google Looker Studio is one of Google’s most powerful reporting tools, yet one of the least known by marketers. This article will explain the basics of Google Looker Studio and provide some examples of what it can do to help make your life easier as a marketer or business owner trying to make sense of your data using dashboards and reports.
Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a free dashboard creation tool that allows you to create visually appealing, customizable, interactive, and responsive dashboards. Panels could be built from templates, the most diversified graphs, maps, and tables can be used, your brand identity can be applied, and other resources can be used — all in a user-friendly manner so that anybody can make and understand the reports. Google Data Studio collects measurements and indications that help decision and strategy-making through data visualization, allowing businesses to take fewer risks and achieve their objectives.
To access Looker Studio, you'll need a Google account, preferably the same one you use for Analytics, Search Console, and/or Google Ads. It is also possible to import third-party data.
Dashboards are great ways to visualize numbers and create something stunning. In Google Looker Studio you can choose from several templates or start your work from the beginning. We have a pretty good blog post about how to build a dashboard if you want to check it out.
You can directly connect your data to Google Looker Studio from Analytics or Search Console After this, you can create a report very easily.
You can find loose numbers to be somewhat boring and even perplexing. Google Looker Studio therefore tries to break this data into simpler components that produce data for graphs and tables.
If you feel satisfied with the results, then you can share your report from Google Looker (Data) Studio.
The most significant advantage of Looker Studio is its ease of use. While it may not be as powerful as some other tools on the market, it is simple to master, and Google provides a wealth of tutorials to assist you in creating thorough reports.
A common platform for data analysis is provided by having a uniform definition for the metrics and dimensions that are shared across your organization.
The format (schema) of the fields that you or other report editors can use to generate your reports is provided by data sources. The data source is where you model your data, such as by adding computed fields, parameters, and changing data types.
Google Looker Studio reports are highly visual, interactive, and simple to comprehend. Therefore, you may use them to display campaigns and demonstrate the value of digital marketing.
Google Looker Studio dashboards may be shared with the team, management, and customers. They may engage with the graphs by changing the date ranges, filtering the data they wish to examine, and downloading, among other things.
Metrics are units of measurement that give the chart's numeric scale and data series.
Google Looker Studio also allows you to track strategy performance data. Throughout the duration of a campaign, the entire team may monitor marketing effectiveness and tweak various components to get better outcomes.
And you can do so in real-time, with data updated every second, allowing you to alter your campaigns quickly.
Creation of reports and dashboards is an example of data visualization. The data is turned into graphs, tables, maps, and other visual aids here. As a result, the information may be shown in a more appealing and intelligible manner.
Looker Studio is best suited for businesses or individuals who want to gain insight into their key metrics without having to be an expert at data analytics. Anyone looking to get started with web analytics would benefit from using Google Looker Studio, and it can even be used by advanced users as a simple way of sharing data across multiple departments or projects. If you would like to learn about another dashboard tool, here is our post about Microsoft Power BI.
If you need more advice on how to use Google Looker Studio or would like to learn about our services, don´t hesitate to book a consultation at Makeitfuture!
Extra Tip: Get your data without programming via Make.com
Imagine that you are doing research and you want to see the results directly in Google Sheets. The good news, is you don´t have to be a programmer wizard to import raw information into the report, Make can do it for you easily, here is how:
1. Sign up for Make.com and import your raw data there
2. Your data will appear in Google Sheets
3. Now you can visualize the results with Google Looker Studio. Enjoy!
Having questions how to do this – feel free to reach out 😊
Cloud Integration, iPaaS, SaaS, BPA… Ough, hard to keep track of all these terms. They are currently used frequently (and increasingly) in the context of automation, and it is sometimes difficult to make a clear distinction and distinction. We have already written blog posts on the terms iPaaS, SaaS and BPA, but we’ll take them up again here to make the difference.
But let’s start with cloud integration, because that’s the central umbrella term in which we embed all the other technologies in this blog post.
Arrange a free cloud integration consultation now
Arrange a free cloud integration consultation now
To illustrate these advantages, an example is suitable that we know well from our everyday work as an automation agency:
The central data to be used here is the data of a major customer. This can be the simplest information, such as the address. This address is required in numerous but completely different processes in the company: on the one hand, for correct invoicing in accounting. On the other hand, in the CRM system, where all the data of the large customer is also stored. But the address is also important in sales, for example, when employees go to the sales meeting on site.
Now the customer announces that the address of the company has changed after a move. This information will reach you by e-mail. There are now two options:
01. The e-mail is forwarded to all affected departments, accounting, sales, customer service, marketing… All persons open their corresponding program, CRM, accounting software, marketing tools (such as newsletter marketing) and change the data already stored there of the customer. This means that in multiple applications, different people do exactly the same thing: change one address.
02. But there is also an alternative: By connecting your applications, thus by integrizing them, the customer’s e-mail, or rather the information it contains about the address change, is automatically passed on to all affected applications: CRM, accounting, marketing, ERP. This does not require any clicks, because the cloud integration detects a trigger, i.e. address change, and thus automatically starts the process.
What sounds unimpressive in a single process becomes more effective when such a process occurs several times a day or weekly. Because there is a lot of data that is available in different applications and should always be correct. If these applications are cloud applications they are suitable for cloud integration.
But cloud integration doesn’t just happen. There are now a variety of applications that enable and implement this. Such tools usually allow us to link the relevant cloud applications on a central platform and define clear rules on when, how, where, how much data should be passed on and what happens to them.
To realize cloud integration, there are various applications and technologies that are sometimes used interchangeably.
We have made a first distinction between iPaaS and BPA here.
We explain the term SaaS in more detail here.
Cloud integration is rather an umbrella term that includes numerous technologies, such as SaaS, iPaaS and BPA, and this is also absolutely necessary. Cloud integration is a concept that is made possible by appropriate technologies.
However, all terms share the commonality that they are cloud-based and thus offer enormous potential for growth and scaling. In addition, they are often cheaper to implement and maintain because changed requirements are easy to implement.
As an independent automation agency, we implement cloud integration according to your requirements. We use a variety of SaaS tools and iPaas (strictly speaking BPA) software. Together we find individual solutions that are flexible and scalable.