Google Data Studio is one of the leading business intelligence tools on the market. Its reporting & dashboarding capabilities stretch far beyond web analytics. With simple Google Sheets & database integrations, this powerful (and free) visualisation platform can provide insights for all business areas and work functions.
What is one thing that you use Google Data Studio for (except marketing and web analytics)?
To help you best utilize Google Data Studio for your business, we asked business owners and data enthusiasts this question for their best insights.
From evaluating employee surveys to empowering business presentations, there are many ways you can use Google Data Studio to visualise your data. Here are eight ways to use Google Data Studio to leverage reports & dashboards for your business:
Evaluating Employee Surveys
We use Google Data Studio to present the results of our employee satisfaction surveys. With 150+ people and dozens of questions, these surveys have literally thousands of data points to consider. After manager review, we present these findings to the individual departments are part of an active discussion on how we can continue improving. The data reports are a great way to present information in an accessible way.
Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding
Reports and Branded Reports
Google Data Studio makes it easy to curate quick branded reports to send out to stakeholders. Instead of trying to create an entire branded report from scratch, it automatically does it for you to then send off immediately. It is a major benefit and a time saver when you are in a crunch.
Michael Jankie, Natural Patch
Tracking Internal Achievements
We are big fans of data visualization. Thus, we try to incorporate it into our daily work as much as possible. One of the ways to do so is using Google Data Studio to track our progress and monitor successful projects, e.g. the number of links acquired, the way it influences our traffic, and so on. It helps us to stay on track with our goals and portrays the efficiency of the team in a nice and interactive way.
Maryia Fokina, Tidio
Data Visualization
If numbers make you feel like you can't see the wood for the trees, look for tools that can show your projects in a visual way that works for you. Project analytics solutions provide strategic criteria that might assist you in gaining a thorough view of all project operations. With data visualization tools you can get high-level data and custom reports in a format that makes sense to you.
Stewart McGrenary, Freedom Mobiles
Creating a Diy Affiliate Program
Rather than paying some ridiculous sum to a third-party provider like AWIN or ShareASale to run your affiliate program, you can do it yourself on the cheap with Google Data Studio. By leveraging UTM tags and Google Data Studio’s click analytics, you can build an in-house affiliate program at no cost to you. Some publishers and content creators might not be crazy about using it, but the reporting and analytics are just as good - if not better. You can completely customize your reporting dashboards and it’s incredibly powerful as you're leveraging the power of Google.
John Ross, Test Prep Insight
Include Images in Tables
Tables with graphics, such as site favicons or press coverage, are becoming increasingly popular. If you are able to upload them somewhere and record the URL, one technique I am working on for our PathSocial website is storing the OG image path for blog articles, as we are running a competition for the most read author/blog post on our website.
Kathryn Smithson, PathSocial
Empower Business Presentations
Google Data Studio is a great data visualization tool to try for every business. The way it makes data easy to understand is commendable. The most common usages of this amazing tool are in marketing and web analytics. But, consider using it in business presentations and experience better audience engagement and a higher convincing rate. The data charts, tables, and reports created by Google Data Studio are visually pleasing and easy to understand. It can help you convey the idea or your perspective to the point. The live data connection features that Data Studio is superb and will make your presentation more lively and realistic.
Jonathan Tian, Mobitrix
Task and Time Management
At Personnel Checks, we absolutely love to integrate Teamwork with Data Studio to create simple and to-the-point task overview reports, which can be easily refreshed and updated on both a daily and weekly basis. Working in the same way that you would with any direct export, we download time tracking data from set tasks within Teamwork, upload it in a spreadsheet format to Google Sheets, and then connect it within Data Studio to a pre-set reporting template. It's particularly effective at allowing us to see, in a visual sense, whether estimated time on a project has met the actual time spent, and we're also then able to compare to previous tasks of the same nature within Data Studio with just a few clicks. Perfect!
James Parkinson, Personnel Checks
Summary
Google Data Studio can accommodate reports and dashboards of all types. Business owners and managers treasure it for its native integration with all Google tools, automated data updates and versatility. It makes it easy to share reports with stakeholders, customise them and separate access to data from access to dashboards.
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