Google Data Studio is an incredibly powerful tool for creating beautiful, custom reports and dashboards that can be viewed in your browser or exported to PowerPoint or PDF format. 

While it’s easy to use, you can significantly enhance the impact of your reports with just a few small changes—steps that are quick and easy to follow but can make your reports stand out among others you’ve ever created. 

If you’re ready to create your first Data Studio report, the step-by-step process discussed in this post will definitely help.

What Exactly is Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio is a free web application that facilitates data visualization in an easy-to-understand format. However, before harnessing its full potential, it’s beneficial to organize your data using Google Drive’s Digital Asset Management. This ensures that your data is structured optimally for visualization. This versatility allows you to pick and choose the most relevant data sources for your reports.

Google Data Studio’s artificial intelligence (AI) automatically brings together data from many different sources, analyzes the combined data, and lets users make dynamic charts, presentations, and reports.

At this point, all that is left for you is to choose whatever tables and charts you want to incorporate into the report and then apply some color themes to those elements. You don’t have to take part in long training sessions to learn how to play the instrument.

By simply moving and dropping charts onto the canvas, you can easily generate periodical project documents, team performance reports, and project budget predictions, among others. 

How to Create a Report in Google Data Studio?

Here are the steps you can follow to create a Google Data Studio report:

1. Start with a Blank Data Studio Report

Visit Google’s Data Studio and log in with the same Google account that is connected to your Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) account. 

After logging in, you’ll be prompted to accept the ‘Terms of Service.’Click on ‘Agree,’ and you’re now ready to create your first Data Studio report.

On the home screen, click on the ‘+’ icon to generate a ‘Blank’ report template. You can also choose one of the pre-built templates available next to the ‘+’ icon. 

Once the Blank template is generated, rename the report to make it easier to identify later. Google will auto-save all the progress you make on the report. 

2. Select a Data Source

For this Google Studio report, we’ll be using a single data source (Google Analytics). However, you’re free to include multiple data sources.

Click on ‘Add data’ from the menu bar to open a new section with the list of available data sources or connectors. Next, click on ‘Google Analytics.’

You can access individualized property panels for every item you employ in your Data Studio report. If you use these Google Analytics reporting templates, you won’t need to have a strong understanding of graphs and tables. The Google Data Studio Templates library gives users a total of eight different types of reports to choose from.

After selecting the connector, you’ll have to authorize Data Studio to connect to your linked Google Analytics account.  

After authorization, you’ll be provided a list of accounts available in your Google Analytics account. For this Google Studio report, we’ve selected ‘Demo Account.’ Once an account is selected, you’ll see a list of ‘Property’ available in the account. We chose ‘GA4- Google Merchandise Store.

After selecting the property, click on ‘Add’ -> ‘Add to Report.’ You can follow the same steps to add other data sources or connectors. 

3. Add Elements

Once the data source/s is added, you can start building the report. With Data Studio, you get an extensive range of elements to choose from. Scorecards, pie charts, line graphs, and geo-maps are some of the most popular options. 

To create this Google Data Studio report, we’ve selected a ‘Time Series Chart’ for visualizing website traffic. To add an element, simply select the element and drop it at your preferred location on the report. 

4. Editing an Element in Google Data Studio Report

After adding the element, you can edit it as per your preference. To do this, click on the element you’d like to edit and make the changes in the panel available on the right. 

You can make similar changes to all the other elements, including line graphs, pie charts, scorecards, tables, and more. 

5. Adding Text Headers and Images

If you want the elements to have headings, you’ll have to add them manually. You can also add images for the purpose of branding or to make the report more attractive. 

To enter the heading, select the ‘Text’ icon from the menu and drop the element wherever you like. 

In the edit panel on the right, you can customize the heading by selecting your preferred font, size, background, border, and more. 

Similarly, you can select ‘Image’ from the menu bar to add any image to the Data Studio report. 

6. Styling

Once you have all the required elements and data on your Google Data Studio report, it is time to elevate the overall appearance. 

When you’ve not chosen any element, you can adjust the Theme and Layout of the report from the sidebar. It will adjust the theme and layout of the entire report. Even after selecting a theme or layout, you can customize them further.

Once you’re done with global styling, you can go ahead and customize every element, text, image, and more. Experiment with a few different styling options to add the finishing touch to your Google Data Studio report. 

After some styling, our final report looks something like this-

Conclusion

Creating reports in Data Studio is simple and easy once you get the hang of it. By following these steps, you’ll be able to create comprehensive, visually appealing reports that will help you better understand your data and make better business decisions.

If you don’t want to create Data Studio reports from scratch, you can also use Google Data Studio templates, as they can save a lot of time and effort. 

Author Bio

Siddhant is a data analytics professional and runs a consulting agency named Eaglytics that specializes in providing end-to-end data services under one roof. His firm primarily works with digital marketing agencies and provides marketing analytics and insights services. Before this, he worked at JPMorgan Chase as a business analyst and graduated from one of the top engineering colleges in India. Outside of work, he’s a hardcore audiophile, loves playing golf, and is a licensed scuba diver.

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