Google Data Studio: 5 Advanced Techniques to Boost Your Visualisation ( Part 1)

Google Data Studio can be hard to master, but it does have some powerful features. This article gives 5 tips for boosting your visualisation in Google DataStudios.

Have you ever hold a massive amount of marketing data and want to verify something but drowned in the sea of data? No? good for you! If yes, let’s high five.

Getting data, understanding and analysing it, and visualising require a level of mastery to unlock invaluable insights for your business.

This could be a real pain if you don’t have an in-house data analyst or specialist to get the answers you need. But what if you can get hands-on experience on Google Data Studio, a free accessible visualisation tool that enables you to create stunning and informative reports for your clients, coworkers or leadership? Would you not like to try it out?

If this sounds right-minded, you may want to check out these two articles for basics.

• The Anatomy of a Great Google Data Studio
• How to turn your Google Data Studio from Zero to Hero

After all, let’s dive deep into the intermediate and advanced features of Data Studio. We’ll start with filters, controls and segments before moving into the calculated fields and blends.

Add Filters Control

In Google Data Studio, there are four types of “Filtering” includes:

• Report-level
• Filter Control
• Widget/(chart)- level Filters
• Segments (GA)

Report-level Filters. Example use cases of this filter might be :

• Organic Search Report
• Mobile-only reporting
• Specific subdomain/website
• Exclude an OS, e.g. Linux or Blackberry

You want to produce a report on mobile traffic, where you have a quick scorecard and device category to show the number of sessions. You can add a filter under the data properties and only include the desired outcome, i.e. device category equals mobile traffic.

Once you saved it, each of your charts has been updated to only reflect mobile traffic throughout the entire report. If you want to remove the filter, you can select File > Report Settings > Filter > Remove Filter.

In most scenarios, you will not filter the entire report, so the widget-level filters come in.

Widget- Level Filters.

Widget- Level Filters is only executed by report admin/editor. When using this filter, there are few things to take note that:

• you can create one, apply it to multiple widgets ( if you like).
• These only live in this report, and they are not an asset shared across multiple reports.
• But they will be copied if you copy a report.
• And if you edit the filter, it will edit it everywhere it’s used, so be careful!

So, take a quick look at how we build filters. We have set a filter only including mobile traffic in our previous chart, but we wanted to have the bigger picture to get the trend chart mobile focus. So we would come into the particular widget selected for the filter with a mobile medium equals CPC filter.

You would notice that it will accumulate a bunch of one-time filters over time, so one recommendation for creating a simplified filter instead is to create a reusable filter and add them simultaneously on the right data properties. They will act as an “AND” condition. You can, of course, stack the multiple filters if you like and apply them to either report or page level.

One thing to keep in mind, filters are attached to the report, and you would need to save a copy to use your customised filter. * They are not attached to the data sources.

In Google Analytics, Segment can be used as an alternative to filters in Data Studio. You can choose to apply a segment:

• Synced or not ( changes in GA will update by your settings in DS)
• Must create segment in GA. It won’t be of use regardless of any data sources you use
• Once you create it in GA, it automatically appears in DS ( if in doubt, hard refresh)

Segment works similarly to filter, except you don’t have to build or do anything. You would need to click on the visualisation, select the GA segment on the right panel, where it gives you all of the system or custom system.

Filter Controls are the all-time favourite about DS as it adds a lot of control and value for your users. There are two types:

1. Drop-down Filter Control
2. Interactive Charts

Filter Control allows you to add a drop-down so that report users can filter the data.

Drop Down List Selection.

You can also put your filter controls in a commonplace on every report to train your users on where to find them. This gives a lot of flexibility to your users to be able to play around with, explore to some extent and analyse the data.

Always recommend placing your filter on the LHS for your report users.

Also, you can have your options for filter controls include:

• Pop-up or always visible ( fixed size)
• Single-select or multi-select
• Default value
• Enable Search Box ( this is a handy feature for the marketing team if they want to search for a specific campaign, but ensure that you are showing the top 5000 in your filter as you can only search in accordance with your settings. Keeping this as the higher value as possible! )

Set the maximum value of your search bar to get the complete insights.

You would also need to think about usability to set your filter to report or page level so that it can take the knock-on effect.

You can also use Interactive Charts as filter controls, where you can find it under the GA segments.

It is extremely helpful, and especially you are having a side by side chart that could quickly help users understand data better.

Note that you may want to train your user a little bit more on how it works than the drop-down. For example, you can click on the desktop category and the time series will filter based on what data has been selected in the table chart. And similarly, if you enable interaction in the time series chart, you can click on any time frame, and the rest of the chart will filter the related data.

Keep in mind that your filter controls can be set as:

• Page-level
• Report level
• Component level (via grouping. Your filter will only apply to the grouping chart)

Filter Control Gotachas…

• Unfortunately, you can’t (yet) use a list of Segments as a Filter Control
• Can’t filter for null values unless the data explicitly contains it (GA does not)

Last, Data Control lets users change the data source that the report pulls from. (For example, one report that you can use across many brands.)

It is only available for certain (Google) connectors:

• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• Campaign Manager
• Search Console
• Ad Manager 360
• YouTube analytics
• TV Attribution

It is safe to build reports in multiple places because users only have access to the data that they have access to. One thing to note is that, unfortunately, you can’t “cull” the list (e.g. Limit it, so that only 1–2 specific GA views, for example, show up.) Users will see everything they have access to. So, keep in mind that Data Control is a good option that works well in an agency type model, or you have a few websites that you want to share internally.

That it is. We’ll continue the calculated fields and blends in our PART II so please stay tuned.

Like most Google tools, Data Studio can be hard to master, but it’s well worth the effort. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with its features, you can use it to create more stunning and powerful analytics reports. If you want to learn more about Google Data Studio, you can check out the CXL course for an in-depth lesson.