First time?

Getting Started With Google Data Studio

As you may have already guessed, this site is about Google Data Studio. I created this website because, well, Google Data Studio is awesome.

Here, you’ll find what you need to get started. If you don’t, drop us a line or get in touch to help us out with a new piece. I am always welcome to new articles and to learn more about this amazing tool. Oh, if you have a story to share with us and want to write a post, I would love to hear from you.

What is Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio is a fantastic tool for creating beautiful dashboards and reports. That’s it. It’s easy to use and, perhaps most importantly, completely free.

Now, “easy to use” might mean different things to different people. For me it simply means that, compared to tools like Power BI or Tableau, you can get started immediately and you don’t need any technical experience to build a report that you can share with your colleagues, clients, and whoever is interested in your data story.

As long as you have a Google account and a data source to work with, you can create a dashboard in minutes.

Who is this website for?

My guess is that you have heard about Data Studio and perhaps seen a report or two, and then asked “How can I create a Data Studio dashboard?“.

And that’s why I built this site. For those, who like me, stumble upon the tool and fell in love. It is really a fantastic tool that all marketers should use.

New to Google Data Studio? Good – here is what you should do now

This turned out to be a guide about guides, but hey – I am here to help.

Start by creating a Google account

You probably have one already, but if you don’t, go ahead and create one on Google.

Read a few beginner guides

Then, it might be worth reading up on a few How-To guides and step-by-step articles.

We obviously have some article on that topic on this site (and more will be written in 2021) but the articles below should be a good starting point:

Understand how data connectors work

To bring in data into your reports you are going to work with something called connectors. Sounds fancy – and it is 😉

It’s not complicated, but it doesn’t hurt to study their basic functions and how you use them. Good posts on that are:

In some cases, you will need to use a premium connector from a company called Supermetrics. You can find these connectors and install them via supermetrics.com.

Start working with templates

Styling your Data Studio reports is fun! For some inspiration check out these posts:

That’s it!

If you have any questions, hook me up on Twitter or the Data Studio Forum on LinkedIn.

Thanks!

Manuel