How Do You Create a Report for Clients Using Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio reports are very useful for you and for your clients. This is what you need to know about using it.

Video transcript:

David: You say that in Google Data Studio, you’re trying to create reports with Google Analytics data to have the UTM and other information that you think will be helpful. But sometimes, Data Studio confuses you because you have to connect the data source and other things to match the report you want, and you’re not having luck figuring out any resources for it.

Tricia: So, I almost want to create a new report. I’m not too sure what I want…

David: Yeah.

Tricia: …about that.

David: I empathize with you I find Data Studio difficult to work with. You might have to edit the report, but you shouldn’t… If you’re using UTM codes and limiting that, you can create a filter on the page that limits to a UTM campaign code, for instance.

Tricia: In Data Studio?

David: Yeah.

Tricia: Okay. How would you do that?

David: Well, Google how to add a filter in Data Studio. So, let’s do something here real quick. I’m going to share my screen. So, in the process, we have a Data Studio report which is the monthly report. So, we can play around with this. And in here is a template.

Tricia: Mm-hmm. I have that.

David: Okay. So, from here, it takes a while to load. But the first thing we want to do is make a copy, so we don’t mess up the new one. And we’re just going to keep using the sample Google Analytics data here.

Tricia: Okay. Well, I think that might be part of it that I get confused about.

David: Okay. Alright. Well, let’s start over. So, we’re going here. We’re going to say, make a copy. Alright. So, this only uses one source of data, in this case, Google Analytics. So, it’s trying to find a new data source. Now I can go and I can select data sources that I’ve already connected, or I can just use the sample data.

Tricia: Okay. So, scroll down… Click that again, so I can see the options. So, that’s going to be basically any Google Analytics that is in the same, on the top right, whoever you’re logged in is?

David: No, you might have to create a new data source. These are data sources of Reliable Acorn that have already been imported into Data Studio. It already has a connection. So, I can select this and create a new report with that data. If I’ve never used Google Analytics or Google Ads with this, I could create a new one with the new data source.

Tricia: Okay.

David: So, if I don’t see the one I want listed, or God forbid, you do what I did.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: And… All website data, which is impossible to see.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: But it can create a new data source. At that point… Oh, there we go. So, now we’re creating a new data source. Now we can base it on any of this stuff. We can upload files, we can use third-party, I use Cervinodata for Facebook ads, new Microsoft ads, and those are paid services, active campaigns, which I use. But the point is, pick your data source. Once you do this, it will go to the account that you’re connected to, and you list all the accounts that have access.  

Tricia: Okay.

David: Select one. Select which property, and I can select the view. If it’s GA4, obviously, it doesn’t have a view.  

Tricia: Okay

David: So, that is why it’s super important when you set up your Analytics, that you put your name in there. I added that as a new process recently in Curious Ants just because I kept running into this problem where all the data said, “no website data,” and it wasn’t helpful to me.

Tricia: Yeah. Okay.

David: But you’ll notice that I have a backup and testing, which is the best practice. But once you select that, what it will try to do, because that’s what we’ve already done here, we’ve used that same data source right here. So, now this report is going to be limited to whatever this data source is. You can change your data or manage it. Alright. If you selected the wrong one or something, you could manage it, and you can remove it and add a new one. Here we go. You can remove or add a new data source. So, you could insert Google Search Console or whatever. But if you’re using UTM codes, that will already be in whatever Google Analytics view you’re doing. The reason I wanted to use the sample data is that I know they use campaign variables.         

Tricia: Okay.

David: So, I was going to go to this field. The second page is limited only to Google organic. Now, unfortunately, the sample data with Google doesn’t show any recent Google organic data. This is really interesting in that we might be looking at real data from their store, right? Because they don’t have any organic search, or maybe it’s internal, and only Google employees use it because there is no organic traffic. But what we can do is we can go here, and I have had a segment for organic traffic. So, in my Google Analytics, I created different segments. Right? So, a Google organic session, new organic visits. So, I could do system segments. What you would probably want to do is say, you’d replace this segment, and you’d say, I want it to do… I’m just trying to add one. Oh, that’s why, because there isn’t a segment unless you create a segment in Google Analytics for that. What you want to do is filter.

Tricia: Okay.

David: And so, I can go to filter, and I can say I want a campaign. Actually, no, I want to create a filter. And so, this is going to campaign; they conclude select a field, campaign. So presumably, you have tagged all of your UTM codes with the same campaign variable. Right? There are three required variables, new campaign, source, and medium. Right? If you’ve done it consistently, no matter which links you’ve tagged, all use the same campaign. You could then set a campaign, and so I’m going to make a presumption. You could set it equal to, or you can say matches RegExp, or starts with… Right? You just need a match.

Tricia: Okay.

David: And so, we can set… So maybe it’s GMB for you because I know you like GMB. Let’s just say that’s it. So now, all this filter on this particular item is filtered by this – campaigns only.

Tricia: Okay. So now, is it going to show the source, and what’s the other thing?

David: If you let it. You’d have to tell it to do that.

Tricia: How do I tell it?

David: What do you want it to show?

Tricia: So, I want… Let me see what my standard things are.

David: Before we get there, let me show you something here that’s important. So right now, this thing that’s selected is filtered by campaigns, or whatever we set, and organic traffic. So, what we really want to do is only filter by campaigns. We want to remove… This is in the way. Oh, there it is. That’s how I remove it.

Tricia: Oh, okay. It’s…

David: There it is. Oh, it’s not like… I might have to increase this. How do I remove this segment? I want to remove the segment. Anyway. Assume we can remove the segments somehow; it’s blanking on me now. What I wanted to really point out is now, if I go to another data point, that filter is not set.

Tricia: Okay. Yeah.

David: I would have to then go and change to add that filter. I want to go to this one. Give it a moment to catch up. No filter. I have to add that filter.

Tricia: Okay.

David: So, you’d have to go through each of those things, right? Otherwise, that data would apply to all things. Here might be a better example. So, here I’ve just listed the full channel groupings. I could go into this, and I can say, I want to filter this, and now this is only GMB data.

Tricia: Okay.

David: But they don’t use the GMB tag. So, I can say well, since we don’t know what they’re using, that’s going to be really hard to replicate. Let’s say this; we do have data here. We can then change this chart to say, rather than mentioning default channel grouping, we can change that to just say source. Right? Or source medium.

Tricia: Yeah. Source medium. Okay.

David: Right. So, if we go and we say, alright, I want to remove this tag. Now, it’s source medium.

Tricia: Okay.

David: So, if we filtered it by a particular campaign, you would then see the data is the dimension is source medium and then the metric, in this case, is conversion rate, but you can change that over here. You could add it to visits or clicks or conversions or bounce rate or whatever you want it. That this kind of control, which is a table.

Tricia: Yes. Okay.

David: Or this is a pie chart that works the same way. This is just the default channel grouping as a pie chart. My sessions. So, you could do, for instance, filtered by GMB and then source, and you’d see if all the clicks, the visits, or whatever you wanted to measure. So, that’s kind of how you want to modify the data. Right?

Tricia: Yes. Okay.

David: Ideally, you don’t want to mess with that. There might be some advanced things that you could do. But you can just filter and view the data however you need to. So that’s why this report is supposed to be the Google organic, or not just Google, but all organic results. This, what I designed here, is an overview of all the things that you can do. Here’s how people found us, how many people, how they found us, and what they did, meaning goal completion after finding us. But if we want to focus on SEO, you go to the second report; that’s only limited. All these dimensions are limited by organic. And so, you could do a similar thing, but rather than filter it by a medium of organic, you could filter it by the campaign of whatever, but you have to go in change all of these.

Tricia: Okay. Okay.

David: Right. There might be a way to select all and then do it.

Tricia: Okay. Is there a way to…? You had the pie chart, but I was thinking about another chart… I can’t think of how you name them. They can compare one month to the last month.

David: Yes. So, I don’t know if they do that with pie charts. So, that’s what these do by default. For example, the user number. In the same date range, which is the auto date range and in Google Data Studio, the auto date range is twenty-eight days, which is great because that basically means four weeks exactly. But, what this does is I can put in this comparison metric. Right. I can change the value, or I can just have no comparison.

Tricia: Okay.

David: So, what this is doing is saying it’s actually got 25% more users than the previous twenty-eight days. They had 26% more sessions from the previous twenty-eight days. 30% more conversions, goal completion. So that’s doing that with that metric; the scorecard allows you to do that. You might be able to do something similar with a pie chart. But you’ll have to play with that. Now there are also different charts you can add.

Tricia: Yeah, maybe like the line for those.

David: But they have third-party widgets you can put in, which are interesting too.

Tricia: Okay. I’ll go in now and… Because part of it is, I think I get a little bit scared because I’m like, I’m going to mess something up. But it’s just pulling data in, and I can just always start the report over again since I’ve made a copy.

David: Right. And honestly, sometimes when I’m doing this, because I don’t do it very often. I set it once and let it go. I get confused, too, because I am not in it. You know, once I’ve created the report, it does what I want. Like, I’ll often set it to schedule email delivering. So, automatically, people get it, including me. In fact, I send Yousseff and my other assistants copies of the reports every month. So they can see how our clients are doing. But yep, as long as you’re not editing this data, which would actually be kind of hard to do.

Tricia: Yeah. Yeah. As long as I select the correct data source…

David: I mean, you’re just displaying things. And frankly, sometimes, it’s just worth starting over. Just start over.

Tricia: Okay. So, I need to… I want to play with that a little bit and get a few things in there. So… Okay.

David: I’d love to see your local report. Because like we talked about in the past, Google insights…

Tricia: …were not good. Yeah. I mean, they’re not accurate. So… Okay. Good. Thank you.