How to Create a Dashboard in Looker Studio

Creating your first dashboard in Google's Looker Studio can feel intimidating, but it's far more straightforward than you might think. A well-built dashboard turns messy data into clear, actionable insights that can guide your business strategy. This tutorial will walk you through building your first Looker Studio dashboard step-by-step, from connecting your data to creating interactive charts and reports.

What is Looker Studio?

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a free tool that transforms your raw data into informative, easy-to-read, and shareable dashboards. Think of it as a blank canvas where you can connect various data sources and visualize the information with charts, graphs, and tables.

Why should you use it? Here are a few key reasons:

• It's free. For powerful, customizable business intelligence, you can't beat the price tag.
• It connects to everything Google. It has native, one-click connectors for Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Sheets, Search Console, and more. This makes it incredibly easy to report on your Google marketing ecosystem.
• It’s highly customizable. You have full control over the layout, colors, fonts, and types of charts you use, allowing you to create branded reports that fit your specific needs.
• Dashboards are dynamic and shareable. Reports are not static images. They are live, interactive documents that can be easily shared with your team or clients with just a link.

Before You Build: Planning Your Dashboard

Jumping straight into building without a plan is the fastest way to create a confusing and useless dashboard. To make something effective, take five minutes to map out your strategy first. A great dashboard answers specific questions, and you need to know what those questions are before you start dragging and dropping charts.

Define Your Goal

What is the single most important question this dashboard needs to answer? A clear goal provides focus and prevents you from getting lost in a sea of data. Don't try to build a dashboard that does everything. Instead, create focused dashboards for specific purposes.

• Poor goal: "I want to see all my data."
• Good goal: "I want to see which marketing channels are driving the most e-commerce revenue this quarter."
• Good goal: "I need to track my sales team's pipeline progress against their monthly quotas."

Identify Your Audience

Who is going to use this dashboard? The needs of a CEO are very different from the needs of a social media manager. Your audience dictates the level of detail you should include.

• An Executive: Needs a high-level overview. Stick to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like total revenue, profit margin, and customer acquisition cost. They want the big picture, fast.
• A Marketing Manager: Needs more granular detail to manage campaigns. They'll want to see metrics like cost-per-click (CPC), conversion rate by campaign, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
• A Sales Rep: Needs operational data. They'll want to see their personal pipeline, deals closed, and activities logged for the week.

List Your Key Metrics (KPIs)

Based on your goal and audience, jot down the top 5-7 metrics that matter most. Sticking to a limited number of KPIs prevents your dashboard from becoming a cluttered data dump. For a marketing director running ad campaigns, this list might look like:

• Total Ad Spend
• Impressions
• Clicks & Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
• Conversions (or Leads)
• Cost Per Conversion (CPA)
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

Step-by-Step: Building Your First Dashboard

With a clear plan in hand, it's time to build. We'll use Google Analytics as our data source for this example, as it's a common starting point for many marketers.

Step 1: Start a New Report and Connect Your Data

First, head to lookerstudio.google.com. In the top left, click the + Create button and select Report.

Looker Studio will immediately prompt you to add data to your report. You’ll see a list of "Google Connectors" and "Partner Connectors." For this guide, find and select Google Analytics.

Next, you’ll need to authorize your Google Account. After authorizing, select the Google Analytics Account, Property, and View you want to use, then click Add in the bottom right corner. Presto! Your data is now connected to this report.

Step 2: Get Familiar with the Interface

You’ll now be looking at a blank canvas with a sample table. It’s worth taking a moment to understand the layout a little bit:

• Toolbar (Top): This is where you’ll find buttons to "Add a page," "Add data," "Add a chart," and "Add a control," among others. You'll spend most of your time here when adding new elements.
• Canvas (Center): This is the main design area where you will build and arrange your dashboard.
• Properties Panel (Right): This is a context-sensitive panel. When you click on a chart, this panel will show you a SETUP tab (to change the data, like metrics and dimensions) and a STYLE tab (to change the appearance, like colors and fonts).

Step 3: Add Your First Visualizations

Let's clear the canvas by deleting the default table and build something from scratch. A great dashboard often starts with a high-level summary at the top.

Add Scorecards for KPIs

Scorecards are perfect for displaying single, important numbers. Let’s add a few:

1. From the toolbar, click Add a chart and select Scorecard.
2. Place it at the top of your canvas. By default, it might show a metric like "Views."
3. With the scorecard selected, use the SETUP tab on the right to change the Metric. Click on the current metric and search for "Total Users." Voila! You now have a live number of your total users.
4. Repeat this process to add scorecards for other important KPIs like Sessions, Bounce Rate, and Conversions.

Add a Time Series Chart

Next, let's visualize how a metric is trending over time.

1. In the toolbar, click Add a chart and select Time series chart.
2. Draw a rectangle on the canvas where you want the chart to appear.
3. In the SETUP panel, the Dimension should already be set to Date. This is correct.
4. For the Metric, let's select Total Users. Now you have a chart showing your daily user trend.

Add a Pie Chart or Bar Chart for Breakdowns

Finally, let's add a chart to break down our audience by a specific category.

1. Click Add a chart and select either a Pie chart or a Bar chart.
2. Place it on your canvas.
3. In the SETUP panel, set your Dimension to something categorical, like Device Category.
4. Set your Metric to Total Users. This chart now shows you the percentage or total number of users coming from desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Step 4: Customize Your Dashboard's Design

With the core elements in place, it's time to make your dashboard easy to read and visually appealing.

• Add Titles: From the toolbar, select the Text icon (a T inside a box). Add a title for your entire report at the top (e.g., "Website Performance Overview") and helper text titles above your charts.
• Adjust Styles: Click on any chart, and then go to the STYLE tab in the properties panel. Here you can change colors, text sizes, background transparency, and more. Creating a consistent style across all charts is key to a professional look.
• Use Shapes to Group Elements: Use the Rectangle tool from the toolbar to draw faint background boxes around related charts (e.g., place a box behind all of your KPI scorecards). This helps visually group information together.
• Pick a Theme: In the toolbar, you'll see a Theme and layout option. You can select a predefined color theme to quickly style your entire report.

Step 5: Add Interactive Controls

Your dashboard can be far more powerful if users can filter the data themselves. Controls allow viewers to slice and dice the data to answer their own questions.

Date Range Control

The most important control is the date range. In the toolbar, click Add a control and select Date range control. Place this in the top right corner of your report. By default, this will set the date for all charts on the page, allowing any viewer to check performance for last week, last month, or any custom date range they choose.

Filter Control

Let's also add a filter. Click Add a control and choose Drop-down list. Place this near your date range control. In its SETUP panel, set the Control field to Session default channel grouping. Now, users can filter the entire dashboard to see data from just Organic Search, Direct, or Social traffic.

Step 6: Share Your Report

Your dashboard is ready! It's time to share it. In the top right corner, click the Share button. You have a few options:

• Invite people: Add email addresses and choose whether they can View or Edit.
• Get report link: This generates a URL you can share. You can manage access so that only specific people can view it, or anyone with the link.
• Schedule email delivery: You can set up your report to be automatically emailed to stakeholders as a PDF on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Tips for a Great Dashboard

• Start simple. It's better to create a clean, simple dashboard that communicates its point clearly than a cluttered one that tries to show everything. You can always add more detail later.
• Tell a story with your data. Organize the layout logically. Place your most important, high-level KPIs at the top left, as this is where the eye naturally goes first. Then, place trend charts and breakdown charts below to provide context for why those KPIs are what they are.
• Label everything clearly. Use simple, direct titles for your charts. "Users by Device" is much clearer than just "Pie Chart." Add text boxes to explain what a metric means or how it's calculated if it's not obvious.
• Use color with purpose. Don't just make things pretty. Use color to draw attention or to group related information. For example, use green for positive trends (like rising revenue) and red for negative ones (like rising ad spend).

Final Thoughts

Building a robust Looker Studio dashboard is a process of defining your goals, connecting your data, and visualizing it logically to answer key business questions. It gets easier and faster with practice, giving you a powerful tool for turning complex data into clear actions that drive growth.

Moving from raw data to actionable insights is critical, but it can still be time-consuming, especially when your analytics are scattered across many different platforms. That's exactly why we built Graphed. We simplify the entire reporting process by connecting to all your marketing and sales tools and using AI to build real-time dashboards for you instantly. Instead of manually creating charts and adding filters, you can just ask for the report you need in plain English. Graphed builds it in seconds, helping your team spend less time on setup and more time finding insights.