Data Studio is a new tool that Google has released that allows us to create highly visual analytics reports.  The link above shows two examples of how different – and how impressive – the reports can look.  We all know that presenting the standard Google Analytics dashboard to our decision makers is largely ineffective.  There is simply too much information formatted in a hard to read manner.  Data Studio can make your analytics effective simply by making them read by the people who need to be reading them.

To get started, you have to import your data sources into Data Studio.  This is done through a simple wizard format.  As a bonus, you can import not only your Google Analytics data, but also information from AdWords, YouTube analytics, Google Sheets, and several more.  This allows you to create a mashup of data from several sources.

Creating a Data Studio report is similar to using such services as Gliffy or Visio.  You can select whatever metrics that you want to display, position them on the page, and style them to reflect your own preferences or office branding.  Any metric that you can access through the GA dashboard should be accessible from within the Data Studio interface.

Data Studio is currently in beta, and users are limited to five reports.  Reports can be as long and complex as you like, though.  One idea would be to create reports for your various audiences – marketing, administration, etc. – and then repeat that report on additional pages for all of your sites.  

Since it can sometimes be daunting to start with a blank page and build a report from scratch, it may be easier to make a copy of an existing report and start modifying it.  Google puts several sample reports and even a tutorial in your Data Studio start page, so take a look through several of them and flesh out your reports to suit your needs.  The important thing will be to make sure that you include the important metrics that are important to you.

Several of us have already created Data Studio reports that you can look at and borrow from.