A look at Looker Studio

Gathering data and making predictions using models is an important part of data management. However, presenting it in a human-readable, pleasant, and engaging format is an entirely different mammoth task. Thankfully, long gone are the days when one would spend painstaking hours plotting thousands of data points. There are a lot of libraries and tools available for visualizing data and organizing it in an appealing format, and Google Looker Studio is one solution Google offers.

Looker Studio gives you a wide range of data visualization options. You can use it to create dashboards and interactive reports. It is free and cloud-based, allowing multiple users to work on the same report, connect many data sources, transform data into graphs and provide meaningful insights. With its drag-and-drop interface and support for real-time data updates, Looker Studio is widely used for business analytics, marketing performance tracking, and data-driven decision-making.

Setting up your first report

1. Accessing Looker Studio

Create an account for looker studio. Remember, this is a product for business, so you must enter a company’s name to sign up to looker studio. Accept the terms of service.

2. Connecting a data source

Create a blank report. Now, you must connect a data source from which you will create the graphs and draw inferences. This data source can be other looker sheets, spreadsheets, locally stored csv files, Google advertisement analytics, YouTube analytics, Databases, among many, many other connecting sources.

3. Start charting!

Now that you have connected your data, upload it to your report. For this demonstration, I have used the Titanic dataset csv. Add charts, apply filters and calculated fields as needed. Customise the themes and colours to enhance the aesthetic and readability!

Key Features

Data Connectivity: Supports integration with various Google and third-party data sources.
Drag and Drop Interface: User friendly, no coding required.
Customisable charts and visualisations: Bar charts, pie charts, maps, trees among others.
Calculated metrics: Allows users to draw inferences and make the data more meaningful
Collaboration: Real-time editing and sharing is possible.

Examples

1. Creating a calculated field

Let’s add another field to check the survival rate for the titanic dataset. Using the following formula:


(SUM(Survived) / COUNT(PassengerId))

Add a scorecard which will show you the overall survival rate of the passengers.

2. Categorising age groups

Now lets check out the survival rate of different age groups for Titanic. For this, add another field "Age Group" for categorising as follows:


CASE 
    WHEN CAST(Age AS NUMBER) < 18 THEN "Child"
    WHEN CAST(Age AS NUMBER) BETWEEN 18 AND 35 THEN "Young Adult"
    WHEN CAST(Age AS NUMBER) BETWEEN 36 AND 50 THEN "Middle Aged"
    WHEN CAST(Age AS NUMBER) > 50 THEN "Senior"
    ELSE "Unknown"
END

We casted the age field as a number, because looker studio was reading it as a text datatype.

Now, lets plot the survival rate of different age groups in a bar chart. The unkown values are for records with missing age fields.

3. Categorising by family size.

Add a field to for the family size of the individual on board. This is calculated by adding the number of siblings, the number of parents and 1 for the person themselves.


Sibsp + Parch + 1

Applications

Looker Studio is used by businesses, individuals, institutions and hobbyists to make beautiful representations of their data. It is used in various domains like Marketing Performance Analysis, Sales and Revenue Reporting, Customer Engagement Tracking, Social Media analytics , and Financial Data.

In conclusion, Looker Studio is a powerful and accessible tool for data visualization and reporting. Its integration capabilities, ease of use, and interactive features make it an essential tool for businesses and analysts. By following this guide, users can set up and utilize Looker Studio effectively to transform data into actionable insights.