How to Create a KPI Dashboard in Looker

Building a dashboard from scratch can feel like a massive undertaking, but a clear KPI dashboard is one of the most powerful tools for understanding your business's performance. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create a high-impact KPI dashboard in Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio). We'll cover everything from planning your layout to connecting your data and designing effective visualizations, step-by-step.

First Things First: What is Looker Studio?

You might see an older tool called Google Data Studio mentioned in tutorials, or you might hear about Looker as a heavy-duty enterprise business intelligence platform. In 2022, Google merged these brands, and Google Data Studio was renamed Looker Studio. This is the free, user-friendly dashboarding tool we'll be using today.

Looker Studio is an excellent choice for creating KPI dashboards because it's completely free, and it seamlessly connects with other Google marketing products like Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, and Google Sheets. It turns your raw data into easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and tables that update automatically.

Before You Build: Planning for Success

Jumping directly into building a dashboard without a plan is like starting a road trip without a map - you'll get somewhere, but probably not where you intended. A few minutes of planning will save you hours of frustration and redesigns later.

1. Identify Your Audience and Their Core Question

Who is this dashboard for? The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your CEO will be different from those for your social media manager.

For a CEO or executive team: They need a high-level overview. Focus on bottom-line metrics like Total Revenue, Marketing ROI, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and quarter-over-quarter growth.
For a Marketing Manager: They need to track campaign performance. Focus on metrics like lead generation, website conversion rate, cost per conversion, and channel performance (e.g., traffic from Organic vs. Paid vs. Social).
For a Sales Manager: They are focused on sales pipeline health. Focus on KPIs like deals created, sales cycle length, conversion rate by stage, and team performance against quota.

Once you know your audience, ask: "What is the single most important question they need this dashboard to answer?" Every chart and number you add should help answer that question.

2. Define and Prioritize Your KPIs

Now that you know your audience, list the specific KPIs that matter to them. Don't go overboard, a great dashboard typically tracks 5-9 primary KPIs. Any more than that, and it becomes cluttered and loses focus. Here are a few examples to get you started:

Website Performance: Total Users, Sessions, Engagement Rate, Top Landing Pages by Traffic.
E-commerce (Shopify): Total Sales, Average Order Value (AOV), Conversion Rate, Top Selling Products, Cart Abandonment Rate.
Lead Generation (HubSpot/Salesforce): New Leads, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Cost Per Lead, Form Submission Rate.
Ad Performance (Google/Facebook Ads): Total Spend, Cost Per Click (CPC), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

3. Sketch Your Dashboard Layout

Grab a pen and paper or open a simple wireframing tool. How you organize the information is critical. Viewers' eyes will naturally go to the top-left corner, so put your most important, high-level KPIs there.

A standard dashboard layout looks like this:

Top Row: A "scoreboard" with your 3-4 primary KPIs displayed as big, bold numbers (e.g., Total Revenue, Total Users, Total Conversions). Include a date range filter here so the user can easily change the time frame for the whole report.
Middle section: Trend lines and bar charts showing how your primary KPIs have performed over time. This provides historical context missing from the big numbers at the top.
Bottom section: Tables and deeper dives. This is where you can break down the "why" behind the numbers. For instance, a table showing campaign performance or top traffic sources.

Step-by-Step Guide: Building Your KPI Dashboard in Looker Studio

With our plan in place, it's time to build. We'll create a simple website performance dashboard using a Google Analytics 4 data source as an example.

Step 1: Create a New Report and Connect Your Data

Navigate to lookerstudio.google.com and click on Blank Report.
Looker Studio will immediately ask you to connect to a data source. You'll see a list of "Google Connectors" like Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and Google Ads. Select Google Analytics.
Authorize your Google account. Then, select the GA4 Account and Property you want to pull data from. Click Add.

Looker Studio will confirm the connection and add a basic table to your blank report canvas. You can delete this table for now, we'll add our own charts from scratch.

Step 2: Add Scorecards for High-Level KPIs

Scorecards are perfect for showing those big, at-a-glance numbers.

From the top menu, go to Add a chart and select Scorecard. Place it in the top-left of your canvas.
By default, it might show a metric like 'Views'. We want to change this. With the scorecard selected, a configuration panel will appear on the right.
In the Data tab under Metric, click the current metric. You can now search for and select the KPI you want, such as 'Total users'.
Under the metric, you'll see a section called Comparison date range. Click 'None' and select 'Previous period'. Looker Studio will now automatically show the percentage change compared to the previous period (e.g., the last 28 days vs. the 28 days before that).

Repeat this process to add a few more scorecards for your main KPIs, like 'Sessions' and 'Conversions', across the top of your dashboard.

Step 3: Show Trends with a Time Series Chart

A single number is useful, but a trend line tells a story. Let's visualize our user traffic over time.

Go to Add a chart and select Time series chart. Place this chart below your scorecards.
The configuration panel for the time series chart allows you to select a Dimension (the X-axis) and one or more Metrics (the Y-axis).
For a daily view, ensure the dimension is set to 'Date'.
Under Metric, select 'Total users'. You now have a visual representation of how your user count has trended daily over the selected date range.

Step 4: Use a Table for Detailed Breakdowns

Tables are great for answering questions like "Which channels are driving the most traffic?"

Go to Add a chart and choose Table. Position it below your time series chart.
For the Dimension, select 'Session default channel group'. This will list sources like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, etc.
For the Metrics, add several relevant KPIs. Click Add metric and add 'Total users', 'Sessions', and 'Conversions'.

You now have a table that very clearly shows which marketing channels are performing best against your main KPIs.

Step 5: Add Filters to Make Your Dashboard Interactive

An interactive dashboard is far more useful than a static one. The most essential control is the date range filter.

From the top menu, go to Add a control and select Date range control.
Place this in the top-right corner of your dashboard. Users can now click on it and choose any time frame they want (e.g., Last 7 days, This quarter, Custom), and all the charts on your dashboard will update automatically.

You can also add other controls, like a drop-down filter for 'Device category' or 'Country', to let users slice and dice the data even further.

Step 6: Customize the Look & Feel

Finally, make the dashboard look professional and easy to read. In the configuration panel for any chart, you'll find a Style tab.

Colors and Fonts: Use your brand colors! A consistent color scheme makes the dashboard look coherent.
Add text and shape elements: Use the Text tool to give your dashboard a clear title (e.g., "Monthly Website Performance Dashboard"). Use the Shape tool (like rectangles) to visually group related charts together.
Clarity Over Clutter: Ensure your chart titles are clear (e.g., change "Total users by Date" to "Daily User Trend"). Leave some white space between elements to avoid a cluttered look.

Final Thoughts

Creating a KPI dashboard in Looker Studio is about combining specific metrics into a clear visual narrative that helps your team make smarter decisions. By planning your audience's needs, selecting the right KPIs, and building your charts step-by-step, you can transform complex data into actionable insights without needing a data science degree.

This process of connecting data sources, configuring metrics, and styling charts, however, can still be time-consuming. We built Graphed to make this easier. Instead of manually dragging and dropping charts, you can simply describe what you want to see - "Show me a dashboard comparing users and conversions by channel for the last 30 days" - and the entire dashboard is built for you in seconds, with your data connected automatically.