If your marketing report is just a screenshot of the Google Analytics "Pageviews" chart, you're wasting everyone's time. A good dashboard shouldn't just present data; it should drive decisions.
Google Looker Studio is powerful, but most businesses fill their dashboards with useless vanity metrics. Here’s a guide to building a report your leadership team will actually care about.
Step 1: Ditch the Vanity Metrics
Stop reporting on metrics that don't correlate with real business outcomes.
- Instead of Pageviews, track: Conversion Rate by channel.
- Instead of Bounce Rate, track: Funnel drop-off points.
- Instead of Session Duration, track: Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
Step 2: Design for Clarity, Not Complexity
A good dashboard is one that can be understood in 30 seconds or less.
- Use Scorecards: Place your most important KPIs (Revenue, Leads, ROAS) in large scorecards at the top.
- Color-Code Trends: Use greens and reds to instantly show if a metric is up or down.
- Keep It to One Page: If you need to scroll, your dashboard is too complicated.
Step 3: Tell a Story with Your Data
Data needs context to be useful. Your dashboard should tell a story.
- Highlight Outliers: Is one campaign dramatically outperforming others? Call it out.
- Segment by Channel: Break down conversions by source (Google Ads, Organic SEO, Social Media).
- Add Annotations: Include text boxes to explain anomalies or key events.
Step 4: Automate and Distribute
A dashboard is useless if no one looks at it.
- ✓ Schedule a daily refresh to ensure the data is always up-to-date.
- ✓ Automate email delivery of a PDF version to all key stakeholders every Monday morning.
Pro Tip: Every website we build at BroCrypt includes a custom Looker Studio dashboard setup at no extra cost.
