A great way to automate reporting tasks
November 28, 2018

A great way to automate reporting tasks

Ben Rubenstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Google Data Studio

We use Google Data Studio to create a marketing dashboard, reporting on all active campaigns and how they're performing against key business objectives. This is being used within a single team right now, but based on our experience we may expand the use to other teams within our larger department. For us, it's really helped to automate reporting tasks and spend more time on analysis rather than pulling numbers. It's also enabled us to bring multiple sources into a single place for easier sharing.
  • Connects seamlessly with Google products (Analytics and Ads) and allows you to quickly update reports with a click (or on a scheduled basis, depending on what's being pulled.
  • Templates that provide a good starting point for common reports (like Google Ads effectiveness)
  • Offers the ability to connect to a wide range of other products via connectors/Google Sheets, to bring all sources under one dashboard view
  • Flexibility to blend data from sources together, create custom metrics, and customize reports in ways that you can't do easily within Google Analytics
  • Sometimes a chart won't display in the way that I want, or won't show data at all, and it can be difficult to understand why. Error messaging/blank data could be more clear for troubleshooting purposes.
  • It's nice to have the opportunity to bring in other data sources, but many of the connectors cost money, so it's easy to hit roadblocks in reporting.
  • The limit of data points on a page can be challenging when trying to bring in a lot of different metrics - for example, I've run into scenarios where I want to add a new metric scorecard but am blocked from doing so, and need to split my report to a different page. I understand this is probably necessary for processing reasons (and processing can be an issue when presenting), but it can be frustrating.
  • It's significantly cut down on the time it takes to report on our marketing campaigns - freeing us up to focus on other tasks.
  • It's made the impact of successful campaigns more clear - leading to more investment in what's working.
  • It's helped to contribute to more of a data-driven focus across our organization.
Before using Data Studio, I was just pulling reports from Google Analytics and building presentations/dashboards with that data. This took a lot more time and forced me to make manual updates regularly. Data Studio takes on more of that behind-the-scenes work - but it still is necessary to have a human eye on the numbers to make sure the reports are built in the right way and are showing things that make sense.
I think Google Data Studio is great for teams that are reporting on complex websites and/or have multiple traffic sources and campaigns, and want to pull key data into one place. It's especially useful if you don't have a dedicated analytics staff, as it does cut down on reporting time. You do need to have some analytics knowledge to use the tool, however; otherwise what's being displayed could be misleading or confusing. The takeaways are just as important as the data itself.

Looker Studio Feature Ratings

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
9
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
10
Report Formatting Templates
10
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Drill-down analysis
Not Rated
Formatting capabilities
8
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
10
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated