TrustRadius Insights for Looker Studio are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Broad Customizability: Users have consistently praised the broad customizability of Google Data Studio, emphasizing how it allows them to tailor their reports and dashboards precisely to their specific needs. The flexibility offered by the customization options has been a key factor in enhancing user satisfaction with the platform.
Integration with Various Data Sources: Reviewers across different industries have expressed appreciation for the expansive integration capabilities of Google Data Studio, noting how it provides them with a seamless way to connect diverse data sources and create comprehensive reports efficiently.
Ease of Access to BigQuery: A significant number of users have highlighted the easy access to BigQuery within Google Data Studio as a major advantage, streamlining the process of retrieving and analyzing large datasets effectively while saving valuable time.
In our company we use Looker Studio to analyze and understand internal KPIs, mostly to verify the profitability of contracts (man hours invested vs value of the contract) by importing time logs from Jira and financial data from our ERP. With the same data we are also able to allocate resources on various projects to normalize the workloads and optimize costs.
Pros
Data integration with various sources
Dashboards are easy to make
Google Workspace integration
Cons
Complex data modeling is best done at the source
The best performance is obtained with BigQuery. Avoid large datasets from other sources
Some features are locked in the "Pro" version, but you can work around some of them
Likelihood to Recommend
First of all, Looker Studio is free. That being said, for its price (which is zero) has a ton of functionalities which can be used when you have to analyze/report big chucks of data for basically any purpose. If you don't need enterprise level features like advanced data permissions or team collaborations, or you are not reselling dashboards or reports to a third party, Looker Studio is perfect.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)
I use Data Studio to monitor the performance of eCommerce articles, looking at revenue, click through rate, ePM, and traffic. Using this data allows us to see how well optimised a page is to convert and make money from our affiliate partners. It also allows us to create different views and bring together different types of articles in different verticals and sectors of retail and eCommerce.
Pros
Customisation
Presentation of data
Different measurements of data
Cons
Load time
Bugs/reports breaking
Likelihood to Recommend
Monitoring the performance of articles and pages, from traffic to revenue.
We make use of Google Data Studio in order to can insight into large amounts of statistical data we have stored in BigQuery. We run reports and generate some visualizations to allow people to better understand the data. This allows non-technical people to get the benefits of the data without too much trouble.
Pros
Ability to define reports.
Report against a large amount of data quickly.
Data visualizations.
Cons
More difficult for non-technical people to use.
It can be a little cumbersome to get everything setup and running.
The documentation could be a lot better.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google Data Studio is best suited for bringing large amounts of data together and creating reports and visualizations in order to gain insights into what the data has to offer. It is easy to share dashboards and reports with other people so that they can access the insights without granting them access to the data.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
Google Data Studio is used across departments at our company. We have daily active users within Operations, AdOps, Product, Engineering, IT, and various Business teams. Self-service GDS dashboards are used extensively for reporting and analysis of various KPIs. We also utilize GDS for email reports. Dashboards are also shared externally with partners. GDS is easy to use for standard and ad-hoc reporting and BI insights and analysis to understand trends and performance.
Pros
Self-service
Easy to use, point and click
Little to no training required
Easy to share internally and externally
Rich visualizations
Canned reports
Easy to copy/paste/dupe existing reports
Ability to join data sets
Easy integration with various data sources
Flexible data integrations, including lowest common denominator (CSV, XLS, G-Sheets)
Wide range of APIs
Secure / authentication via Google SSO
Easy to share / re-assign ownership of reports and data sources
Cons
Limited data joining / merge options
Limited ETL
Limited calculations / regex configs
Limited data labels and presentation reporting settings vs. alternatives
Can be slow to update (dreaded "GDS is not available, please try later")
Likelihood to Recommend
Pros: -Cost -Easy to use -Self-service -Flexible visualizations out of the box -Data sources, plug & play -Easy to share (internal and externally) -Easy to export and import data -Easy to clone, edit, manage dashboards
Cons: -Can be slow / not reliable -Date ranges and sorting defaults can sometimes get messy -Data joins/mergers can be challenging -Limited to joining 5 different data sources -Some quirky limitations on UI, labels -Getting help / support can be a challenge from Google, generally on your own
We use Google Data Studio to create reports for our clients using several data sources, including Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights, Facebook/Instagram Ads. It allows us to easily customize how we show the data from the various sources and allows us to filter, highlight, and customize the color palette.
Pros
Combines data sources into one report.
It's free.
Filtering is easy.
It's intuitive if you understand analytics and ads.
Cons
Allows you to send automated reports from your own email rather than from Google.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great for most of what we need to run reports on, but buying connectors could probably get expensive. If you need to connect more than five data sources, it might be cheaper to use another third-party Analytics reporting tool. However, in most cases, we find that it allows us to show data in various types of graphs and charts, and add our own color palette, logo, etc.
We are a professional services organization, so we use Google Data Studio product to support our clients. We use it for a variety of use cases - simple web analytics reporting dashboards, SEO performance, cleaning up data via regex statements, executive dashboards of key metrics across a variety of platforms and custom spreadsheets. We also use this internally for the same needs, in addition to operational tracking and data visualization.
Pros
Efficiently displays data that you need to refer to regularly.
Makes data less intimidating to non-analytics stakeholders.
Cons
Custom calculations
More variety of graphs
Likelihood to Recommend
Displaying direct data from any analytics tools is excellent, complex analysis or calculations is difficult directly in Google Data Studio.
Google Data Studio is our organization's current aggregate data visualization tool for all organic media (Instagram, Facebook), marketing analytics tools (Firebase, Google Analytics, Google Search Console), and other user information software (Cooper - CRM, PostgresSQL, Google Sheets).
Our team's marketing department frequently looks at reports and dashboards to see leading and lagging KPIs across each platform.
Google Data Studio allows us to view all our data sources in one location, track A/B multivariate tests with WoW and MoM data, and makes it easy to make decisions and conducts tests as the data is presented in an easy-to-consume format.
Pros
Pre-loaded Report Templates: Without a data visualization experience/training it's most likely difficult to set up the desired dashboard you envision. Fortunately, Google Data Studio offers pre-loaded reports for the most common data source connections. These common connections include: Google Ads, Firebase, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and more. They save a lot of time and are easy to substitute data variables.
Being a remote company, it can be difficult to share in real-time... not with Google Data Studio. If our team is viewing the data on a call, we are able to update the dashboard in real-time and everyone is able to see the changes made without refreshing. Subsequently, as one user is able to change data parameters (dates, labels, etc) and the rest viewing the data are able to follow along.
It can be difficult to get ideas how you should prepare your data - which KPIs should I include? In what order? Should I use a pie graph or bar chart? Thanks to Featured Data Studio reports I'm able to look at shared reports generated by others to get ideas on how to set up similar data.
Cons
While Google Data Studio has a resources (video tutorial) tab, it's very basic. The tutorials state navigational answers to exploring around the site, setting up data connections, and creating calculated fields. The videos are outdated 2016 and older and rarely dig into the actual building of reports and dashboards, especially with Google-owned products.
In order to connect solutions outside Google's products such as 3rd party tools, you need to pay a subscription to a 3rd party service to connect the data. The two main companies (Supermetrics, Power My Analytics) help you connect these 3rd party tools through their subscription services.
Notification of data connections being removed. On a few occasions, I will enter Google Data Studio only to find out there is missing data and that I need to reconnect a data source. While this doesn't happen too often it would be ideal to be notified so I can fix this right away rather than be notified by a team member that the connection is broken.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking for a free data visualization tool or are a smaller business that uses mainly Google entry products and a few outside analytical tracking tools, then I would highly recommend Google Data Studio. Instead, if you evaluate data from a lot of third-party tools or you have an enterprise software solutions, it would be better suited to look into a paid data visualization tool like Tableau.
Data Studio is used on and off for really specific needs such as following closely a web site KPI for example. Currently, Data Studio works great with Google Analytics (GA) data. You can create OK looking dashboards using GA and make calculations between metrics. However, it's not yet ready to include outside source files and it becomes very complex to inject targets for example and calculate such KPIs as % Monthly sales vs sales targets. For this reason, we use Data Studio mainly as a quick access to GA data more than anything else.
Pros
Quick visualization for real-time Google Analytics numbers.
Calculations between GA metrics.
Easy report distributions.
Cons
Having green/red arrows to show how a metrics is fluctuating vs a defined period.
Having control box or dials to switch between weekly and monthly views or filtering lists on different levels.
The module to control external sources is awful and very complex and unreliable. Stick to GA data for now or use another tool such as Klipfolio to gain time.
Likelihood to Recommend
Really depends on the need. If it's to produce a dashboard that needs to look good and is reliable, I would use a different tool. However, if that colleague is an analyst, I think Data Studio is a quick and free tool you need to have in your analytics toolbox.
We use Google Data Studio to beautify and simplify raw data for clients. At one point in time clients claimed they wanted the raw data and would do these things themselves. Unfortunately, and predictably, that ended up not being the case. Google Data Studio allows us—with some exceptions—to quickly get them the deliverable they want and we don't mind spending the extra time as it's minimal with maximum client satisfaction.
Pros
The integration offering is robust and I've yet to run into a situation where we were not able to get our data into Google Data Studio
Creating a beautiful report can be done with minimal training
Sharing a report and determining the permissions takes seconds which is especially valuable when someone wants to see something quickly
Cons
We often have data fields that have multiple values separated by commas. Some BI tools provide options to visualize that data as a group or as individual data points. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a simple way to do this in Google Data Studio
Copying a report is, surprisingly, different from other Google Suite tools. Continuity is difficult in a company the size of Google but it's still disappointing.
Forgiveness could be improved when it comes to configuring the data resource. Often, sometimes 20+ minutes can be wasted on a 1 second mistake. This could be a user error but it's one that I haven't found an easy answer for.
Likelihood to Recommend
Rather than trying to create visuals in Google Sheets, you're able to create a much prettier and interactive combination of visualizations when connecting that specific Google Sheet to Google Data Studio.
This being a free tool, I've found that a lot of advanced functionality we enjoy using in other BI tools is lacking in Google Data Studio. Therefore, if you really want to dig into data, it may not be the right fit for you.
