Google Analytics is a treasure trove of information that can tell you how users discover, explore, and utilize your website. Looker Studio is a powerful tool for data visualization and reporting with a range of customization options for your specific requirements. Integrating Google Analytics with Looker Studio will allow you to delve even deeper and gain more meaningful insights into user activity on your website. In this article, we will show you a step-by-step guide to creating a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Website Report in Looker Studio so you can access and visualize your data in a meaningful and actionable way!
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Topics Covered:
Part 1: Creating a Blank Report
Step 1: Navigate to lookerstudio.google.com
Step 2: Select "Blank Report"
Step 3: Connect the Data Source
Step 4: Click on "Insert" to add elements to your report
Step 5: Customize your elements
Part 2: Inserting Scorecards for Top-level Performance
Step 1: Insert a "Scorecard" element and duplicate it a few times
Step 2: Select the metrics that you'd like to showcase
Step 3: Apply a "Comparison date range"
Step 4: Insert a "Date range control"
Step 5: Select the date range you'd like to view in the report
Part 3: Inserting Combo Chart for Customer Journey Trend Lines
Step 1: Insert a "Combo chart" element
Step 2: Select the Dimension and Metric
Step 3: Sort the month in an ascending order
Step 4: Customize the report further through the "Style" tab
Step 5: Duplicate the same chart 2 more times and change the metric of each chart into "Events" and "Conversions"
Part 4: Inserting Pie Chart for Channel Acquisition Overview
Step 1: Insert a "Pie chart" element
Step 2: Change the Dimension to "Session default channel grouping"
Step 3: Duplicate the same chart 2 more times and change the Metric of each chart into "Events" and "Conversions"
Part 5: Inserting Table for Top-Level Channel Performance
Step 1: Insert a "Table" element
Step 2: Select the Dimension "Session default channel grouping" and select the Metrics you'd like to showcase
Step 3: Click on "Chart" and select "Table with Heatmap"
Step 4: Show the "Summary row" to see the aggregation of the metrics
Step 5: Add a "Comparison date range" to the previous period
Part 6: Inserting Table for Page Performance
Step 1: Duplicate the channel performance table
Step 2: Select the Dimension "Full page URL" and select the Metrics you'd like to showcase
Part 7: Adding Titles to Each Element
Step 1: Insert a "Text" element
Step 2: Title the Elements accordingly
Part 8: Adding Images and Logo
Step 1: Insert an "Image" element
Step 2: Click "Select a file"
Step 3: Upload your image and style it accordingly
Part 9: Adding More Space to the Report
Step 1: Click on "Page" and select "Current Page Settings"
Step 2: Click on "Style" and increase the Height
Part 10: Applying Filter to Specify the Event Count
Step 1: Navigate to Google Analytics
Step 2: Navigate to "Acquisition" > "Traffic acquisition: session default channel group"
Step 3: Find the Event count and click on the "All events" dropdown
Step 4: Note the name of the Event you'd like to report on
Step 5: Navigate back to the report and click on the elements that include the "Event count"
Step 6: Click on "Add a filter"
Step 7: Configure the filter parameter and click "Save"
Step 8: Click on the Pen symbol on the Metric and rename it accordingly
Step 9: Apply the filter to all the other elements
Part 1: Creating a Blank Report
Step 1: Navigate to lookerstudio.google.com
Step 2: Select "Blank Report"
Step 3: Connect the Data Source
1. Select Google Analytics.
2. Select your Google Analytics account and property (GA4) and click "Add".
Step 4: Click on "Insert" to add elements to your report
Through this tab, you'll find all the elements that you can include in your report, such as tables, charts, scorecards, shapes, texts, images, and more.
Step 5: Customize your elements
In this example, we will insert a rectangle and text element first to create the header of the report and customize the style of the properties accordingly.
Part 2: Inserting Scorecards for Top-level Performance
Step 1: Insert a "Scorecard" element and duplicate it a few times
A scorecard showcases a single metric.
Step 2: Select the metrics that you'd like to showcase
Click on each element and set the metrics that showcase your top-level website performance, including traffic, qualitative metrics, soft KPIs, and hard KPIs.
In this example, we are showcasing the Sessions (traffic), Engaged sessions (qualitative metric), Event count (soft KPIs, i.e. add to carts, checkouts, visits on key pages, etc), and Conversion (hard KPIs, i.e. sale, form completion, etc).
Step 3: Apply a "Comparison date range"
Select the metrics and select a comparison date range from the dropdown: Previous period.
You will see some indicators that show the comparison of performance from the current date range to the previous period. For instance, if you're looking at a weekly report, it will compare the results to the previous week; if you're looking at a monthly report, it will compare the results to the previous month.
Step 4: Insert a "Date range control"
Step 5: Select the date range you'd like to view in the report
In this example, we have set the date range to this year to date. You can see that the data will refresh to the date range that has been set (1 Jan 2023 - 2 Apr 2023, in our case). Now we have a reusable report where you can change the dates and see the updated numbers without having to recreate the report.
Part 3: Inserting Combo Chart for Customer Journey Trend Lines
Step 1: Insert a "Combo chart" element
Step 2: Select the Dimension and Metric
In this example, we will select month as the dimension and sessions as the metric.
Step 3: Sort the month in an ascending order
The chart will be sorted in ascending order by month from January to December.
Step 4: Customize the report further through the "Style" tab
In this example, we have added 12 bars to represent 12 months, selected show data labels, and changed the color of the chart.
Step 5: Duplicate the same chart 2 more times and change the metric of each chart into "Events" and "Conversions"
Now we have three charts that represent the trend of your traffic (sessions), key actions taken on your website (event count), and how many people convert (conversion) every month. Through these charts, we'll be able to understand the flow of how people move from one step to the next in your customer journey.
Part 4: Inserting Pie Chart for Channel Acquisition Overview
Step 1: Insert a "Pie chart" element
You can change the style from a Pie chart into a Donut chart by clicking on the "Chart" dropdown and selecting the relevant chart style.
Step 2: Change the Dimension to "Session default channel grouping"
Step 3: Duplicate the same chart 2 more times and change the Metric of each chart into "Events" and "Conversions"
The chart now shows the percentage of sessions/events/conversions coming from various channels on your website. Now you can understand the channels that drive traffic, channels that are driving soft KPIs, and channels that are converting as a percentage. From here, you can understand which channels are actually valuable in driving conversions in proportion to their traffic, and which channels are not producing significant results.
In a nutshell, you can find two scenarios:
Channels that drive traffic but don't drive key actions and conversions
Channels that drive very little traffic but proportionally drive key actions and conversions
Part 5: Inserting Table for Top-Level Channel Performance
Step 1: Insert a "Table" element
Step 2: Select the Dimension "Session default channel grouping" and select the Metrics you'd like to showcase
Step 3: Click on "Chart" and select "Table with Heatmap"
Step 4: Show the "Summary row" to see the aggregation of the metrics
Step 5: Add a "Comparison date range" to the previous period
The completed table will now have a Delta column that shows the performance of each channel by each metric in comparison to the previous period, i.e. whether the performance went up or down and by how many percent. It also has a Grand total on the bottom to summarize all the performance, as well as heatmaps to see the concentration of each metric across the channels.
Part 6: Inserting Table for Page Performance
Step 1: Duplicate the channel performance table
Step 2: Select the Dimension "Full page URL" and select the Metrics you'd like to showcase
Now you'll have a table that shows all the pages on your website and the sessions, views, event count, and conversions performance of each page.
Part 7: Adding Titles to Each Element
Now that you have created a few tables and charts in your report, you should label them so you can understand clearly what each element are representing.
Step 1: Insert a "Text" element
Step 2: Title the Elements accordingly
Part 8: Adding Images and Logo
Step 1: Insert an "Image" element
Step 2: Click "Select a file"
Step 3: Upload your image and style it accordingly
Part 9: Adding More Space to the Report
Step 1: Click on "Page" and select "Current Page Settings"
Step 2: Click on "Style" and increase the Height
Part 10: Applying Filter to Specify the Event Count
If you want to specify the report further, for instance showcasing a specific event count and not all events on your report, then you can do that by applying a filter.
Step 1: Navigate to Google Analytics
Step 2: Navigate to "Acquisition" > "Traffic acquisition: session default channel group"
Step 3: Find the Event count and click on the "All events" dropdown
Step 4: Note the name of the Event you'd like to report on
For example, we want to report only the "click_on_book_training" for soft KPIs.
Step 5: Navigate back to the report and click on the elements that include the "Event count"
In this example, we will click on the Scorecard element.
Step 6: Click on "Add a filter"
Step 7: Configure the filter parameter and click "Save"
To make the event count report only the "click_on_book_training" event, we will set up the parameter such that the filter includes event name which contains [click_on_book_training]. Now this scorecard will not report on all soft KPIs but only on the event count that contains the "click_on_book_training" name.
Step 8: Click on the Pen symbol on the Metric and rename it accordingly
In this example, we will label the metric specifically as "Clicks to Book Training" instead of "Event count".
Step 9: Apply the filter to all the other elements
Now you have created a report that shows the performance of your website across various metrics and dimensions. Of course, this is only the foundation of your report. There is so much more that you can do in Looker Studio to access even more meaningful data for your decision-making, so make sure to take the time to explore the various functionalities in this powerful analytics tool!
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