What is up Measure friends?
This is Eric from MeasureSchool and today we're going to look at how to build
a dashboard in Looker Studio, previously known as Google Data Studio.
Now what's the plan for today?
We're going to look at how to build
the very same dashboard that you're seeing right now in front of you,
which is in fact a simplified version of the following dashboard right here.
But more on this later.
We're going to look at how to visualize web traffic data.
And don't worry if you don't have a website, because everything we're going
to cover will be applicable to any kind of data that you have.
We're also going to look at tips that will
help you get started to become a pro Looker Studio user.
So let's get started.
Using your Gmail account, head over to lookerstudio.google.com
which will lead you to the page we're on right now.
In Looker Studio, there are multiple ways to start building a dashboard.
You can use, for example,
the Template gallery by selecting one of the thumbnails here.
And since we're building a dashboard
from scratch, we'll use the create button, which has this beautiful plus sign here,
on the left side. Click on Create, click on Report.
You can do the same with the Blank Report.
That also has the plus sign, which is what we're going to do right now.
At this moment, you need to send your data to Looker Studio.
And to do this, we're going to need the help of Connectors.
For example, if I was to visualize
and analyze Google analytics data, I will use the Google Analytics connector.
If I would like to do the same with Google
Ads data, then I will use the Google Ads connector.
Since our data is in Google Sheets, I will use the Google Sheets connector.
And we have also shared the data set in the link below. Click Google Sheets,
make sure to select the correct spreadsheet and the correct worksheet.
Then click Add.
Wait a few seconds and click Add To Report.
Great, now we're on Looker Studio and we'll be welcome with this default table,
which is Looker Studio's way of saying hi, hello, I'm here.
But we're not going to need this.
So you can right click on it and select
Delete and you can do the same with your keyboard.
Now let's discover a bit the interface.
To start building a dashboard, you'll need to add charts so you can go
here and click Add a Chart and see the available charts.
In lucrative, you have very common ones like Table, Scorecards, Time series,
Bar charts, Pie charts, and Geo charts, and I'll let you explore the rest.
You also have the option to change your theme and layout.
Here on the right side, click on Theme and Layout and you'll be
presented with a list of themes which offer also different colors.
For example, if I was to select Constellation,
you'll see that the background will change for our demonstration I will use Edge.
Now I also want to change the layout because I want to increase the size of our
dashboard so we can have more space to play with our data.
I'll increase it to 1500.
Now let's look at how to actually build and modify a chart.
Click Add a Chart and select Table.
You can drag or just click.
Now, what's important to know are these two columns that you have.
On the right side you have the Properties panel which is divided by Setup and Style.
And you also have the Data panel.
The Data panel is where you can access data from your data source which is
organized into Dimensions and Metrics and other types of data.
Dimensions are basically attributes of your data.
Think of categories and colors.
So usually anything that is in text form and you will see that
for example,
if I wanted to look at which Browsers my visitors were using to get
to my website, I will look at here and it has the icon that says ABC.
That's how you know that this is a dimension. For Metrics, which is your data
that you can use to calculate and it is usually numbers,
you will see 123
like for revenue. There are other types of data like geolocation data and dates.
For example, Country has the map here and Date has the calendar icon.
So if I was to for example, modify the data in this table,
what I'll do is I want to not just see the session source,
I'm interested in seeing cities and total users.
I will select City and drag it to Dimension here.
Now you can see that City has been added to the table.
You can also remove a Dimension by clicking on the Cross symbol.
Now I want to add Total Users.
So I go to Total Users and bring it here.
There are other ways to do this.
You can use the search feature at the top here.
And for example, if I was looking for Total Users and you can also go into one of your
dimensions or metrics and just select your Dimension or Metric right from here.
Great.
Now let's see how to actually build this dashboard.
And we're going to start with the banner and the scorecards here.
And scorecards are like snapshots of your KPIs, your key performance indicators.
So I'll delete this table.
Let's add a shape so near them and layout you'll see Shape feature.
Click on Rectangle.
You can drag resize everything.
Okay, now I'll add my scorecard.
So click on Add a Chart, select your Scorecard. Click anywhere.
I want to change Record Count to show Total Users.
So I can click here on Record Count and I change it to Total Users.
Now we want to fix this contrast issue.
So for that I will go to Style and change
the background by scrolling down in Background and Border.
Select the bucket and click Transparent
but now we see that we are not able to look at the numbers.
So for that, you can just go up to Labels,
click on the Font Colors and let's select White.
Great.
Now, rather than rebuilding all these scorecards one by one, here's a trick.
Select your scorecard, right click on it and click on Duplicate.
You can also use your keyboard to do
the same by using the Copy Paste functionality.
So I'll just click on Duplicate and I'll bring this here.
But since we have four scorecards, I'll use the CTRL key on my keyboard
and select it with my mouse and select the other scorecard.
Right click, Duplicate.
And here I have my four scorecards. Great.
Now let's look at the first section of our dashboard where we have this big number
here that shows the numbers of visitors that came to our website and also the line
graph in order to see trends with our total users.
For this, we're going to add a chart and let's go with the Scorecard again.
And I'll just make this a little bigger
and let's change the metric to Total Users.
There you go.
And then we're going to change the style.
Let's increase the text size to 60.
I want to change this to the color and go to Labels.
And Font select green.
I want to also remove the header that says Total Users here.
So here in Hide Metric, just select that box,
scroll down and remove the background and set it to Transparent.
There you go.
Now let's add our line chart. In Time Series,
select time series chart.
Click here.
We going to maybe stretch this out a little.
All right, I want to change a few things here.
So first of all, I want the line to be a bit heavier.
So I'll click on Line Weight, select five.
And now in series color, select the Pencil icon and select Black.
I also want to remove the grid lines and also the background.
So I'll go to the Grid Line section, scroll down here, and in Grid Color,
set it to Transparent and do the same with the background.
Select it to Transparent.
Now let's add some text. Do this.
Just make sure to select Text here near the shape.
We want to add this text here.
I'll just paste it.
Select your text.
Let's increase the font size to 20.
And also let's make it bold.
And we can reorder and position our charts here.
And we have basically recreated the first section of our dashboard here.
Now let's go on to the second section where we want to see basically the top
five cities, the cities that bring us the most users.
So we can use a bar chart for this. At the chart, select Bar Chart, click here.
Now we're going to change the metric and the dimension.
For dimension, we are going to select City.
Then we already have Total Users, so that's fine.
And I will also remove the background
and the grid lines, which you should know how to do by now.
So let's go to style.
And first of all, because we're interested
in looking only at the top five cities, we'll reduce the numbers of bars.
So in bars, I will just reduce this number to five.
I will change now the color by selecting
this blue color and select the theme color that I want.
Then I will scroll down in Grid and select
Grid Color, set it to transparent and change the background,
scrolling down to a background bucket and setting it to Transparent.
Great. Now we could start building our geo chart
by going again to Add a chart and then selecting a Geo chart.
But I'll show you a trick.
Click on your bar chart, copy paste it, and then watch Looker Studios Magic.
What I can do now is simply to go to Style.
Here in the Properties panel and right on top, you'll see Chart.
Select the drop down and select your Geo chart.
Watch your data transform.
Here you go.
Now you can change the color settings.
Take the chart, go to Style,
and I'll change the maximum color value to our theme color.
And I can change also the minimum color
value to something like a light red, just so that we can have some contrast.
There you go.
Now, the last part of our dashboard has this.
We are interested in knowing what's the most popular content on our website.
So I'll add a table and I'll click and drag and make it a bit larger here.
Now I will add the following dimensions and metrics.
I'll remove Country.
I will put in Page Path and Screen Class, which will show us the path of our URL.
I can increase the size here.
Then I will add in Views, Sessions, Engaged sessions,
and also Revenue to see if there are any pages that is related to our revenue.
And by the way, these can be reordered the way you want.
All right, now there's only two things left.
We're going to look at how to add
a control like this date Range Control here.
And a data control basically helps you to display data the way you want based
on your condition or basically filter your data.
For example, if I was to come here and select the date range, let's go back,
let's say to October 10th, and let's use January 10th of this year and click Apply.
Then you'll see that the numbers will change.
To do this, go to Add a control, select Date Range Control.
Let's click here.
We're going to style it up a little.
Go to Style.
I want to make the background transparent.
I also would like to give it some border color in white.
And I'll change also the radius to 15, the border radius.
Now we can see the text, so let's change the font color to white.
And there you have it.
Now let's add the logo to this here on top near text, click on Image,
I'll upload it from my computer and let's select the Measure School logo.
Here you go.
Now we have again a contrast issue, but you can change that by going to Style,
Background and set it again to transparent.
But just so that you know,
this will only work if your image or your logo has already a transparent background.
Let's resize it.
And there you have it.
We have recreated the dashboard that we have here.
Wow. So we've looked at how to build
a dashboard in Looker Studio and this was a lot of fun.
Now I'd like to share something else with you.
Apart from building dashboards that can display information, we also want to build
dashboard that provides actionable insights.
And this means dashboards that can basically guide your users and also lets
them understand what's the state of whatever you're analyzing,
but also give you an idea of where you are heading in the future.
Which makes the difference.
Between a dashboard like this one and this one, where we don't only see the number
of visitors coming to our site, but if we're also actually hitting our targets.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this video.
This was Eric from Measure School and see you next time.