Item: Looker Studio
Rating: 7
Author: Natalie C. Winslow

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Data Studio to create reports for our clients using several data sources, including Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights, Facebook/Instagram Ads. It allows us to easily customize how we show the data from the various sources and allows us to filter, highlight, and customize the color palette.

Pros and Cons

Combines data sources into one report.
It's free.
Filtering is easy.
It's intuitive if you understand analytics and ads.

Allows you to send automated reports from your own email rather than from Google.

Return on Investment

No hard number here, it just enables us to pull in data efficiently.

Alternatives Considered

Sprout Social

I like Google Data Studio because it pulls in from various sources in a way that's easy for me to use. I haven't tried a ton of dashboards because the cost is prohibitive for small businesses.

Support Rating

Google's support is terrible, no matter what product you're using. A four is generous, and only because I've never had to use their support.

Key Insights

Do you think Looker Studio delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Looker Studio's feature set?

Yes

Did Looker Studio live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Looker Studio go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Looker Studio again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Google Analytics, Google Ads (formerly AdWords), Facebook for Business

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great for most of what we need to run reports on, but buying connectors could probably get expensive. If you need to connect more than five data sources, it might be cheaper to use another third-party Analytics reporting tool. However, in most cases, we find that it allows us to show data in various types of graphs and charts, and add our own color palette, logo, etc.

A Good, Free Tool to Aggregate and Visualize Data for Client Reporting

Overall Satisfaction with Google Data Studio