A date range control allows your viewers to change the time frame of a report.

You as report owner or editor can set a default date range, and report viewers can adjust the date range of the charts in a report to meet their needs.

A filter control allows viewers to select one or more dimension values from a list by which to filter the report.

For example, you as report owner or editor can create a filter control for the country, and report viewers can select or deselect the countries whose data they want to include or exclude.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when using controls:

  • By default, a control placed on a given page will affect as many of the charts on that page as possible.

  • If you wish for the control to affect one only or more charts, you can limit its scope by grouping the control with specific charts.

  • You may want to make a control report-level, to duplicate it on every page of your report. This is especially useful for date range controls, which commonly appear on every page of a report.

Sharing Overview

Now, your report is ready to be shared for collaboration!  Let’s review how different Data Studio files (reports and data sources) can be shared:

Reports: For reports, you can give others to view or edit access, at which point they’ll receive an email with a link to view or edit that file. Viewers can view and interact with the report, while editors can make changes to the design, chart data, format, and so on.

Data sources: Similar to report sharing, you can give others to view or edit access to your data source files, at which point they’ll receive an email with a link to view or edit that file.

Tip: Use caution when giving edit access to a data source. While sharing does not grant access to the underlying data set, modifying a data source could cause it to be incompatible with existing charts that use it. Sharing a data source with view access lets people create reports from that data source without being able to change the data source.

Foundational principles of visual design

The goal of your report is to empower your audience with information. Whether your audience is you, your boss, your team, or the wider public, you’ll need to design your report to match their needs.

Begin by asking yourself:

  • Who is your audience?
  • Why are they invested in these analytics?
  • What do they already know?
  • What do they need to know?
  • How is this information intended to drive action?

With those answers, you can provide context and present information measured against the audience’s goals.

In general, keep visualizations simple and high-level; don’t overwhelm your first page or the top of your report with all the information. This overview will help viewers quickly understand the big picture.

Then, allow them to help themselves to more detail as needed. This might come in the form of filter controls, additional report pages, or hyperlinks that will load more detail when the viewer is ready for it.

Visual elements that are similar in shape, size, and/or color are perceived to be more closely related.  In your report, it’d be good practice to give related items similar to coloring or styling.

Conversely, if items are different, they should visually contrast.

Color is a powerful tool to guide viewers through your report.

  • Brand your report: You can choose from Data Studio’s color palette, or use custom colors based on your branding. Simply enter your brand color’s HEX codes and the appropriate color will be used!

  • Use transparency to create visual hierarchy: A sliding scale allows you to make component colors more or less transparent.

  • Use saturation to draw attention: Intense colors draw the eye, so this might be a good way to draw attention to an important metric (say, in a scorecard) or the most critical chart on the page.

  • Don’t rely on color: Color can be a great tool to guide viewers through your report and maintain your branding.  However, visual clues aren’t always reliable, and some report viewers may not discern differences in color.  For this reason, it’s good practice to ensure your reports don’t rely entirely on color and important data points are highlighted well on their own.

When editing a report, the “Theme” tab of the right-side panel lets you establish consistent default styling across your report.

You can use a default color theme or create a custom theme.  This includes choosing colors, background, and border appearance.  It also includes a setting for how colors should apply consistently:

  • By series order: The color depends on the order of the item in a series. For example, the first series is always blue.
  • By dimension values: The same value maintains a fixed color. For example, “France” is always represented in blue.

Finally, you can also choose colors to represent increasing or decreasing metrics across your report. The default is green and red, respectively, though you can customize this as you like.

Reports provide visualizations that help viewers gain insight and take action.

Once you know your viewer’s goal, choose a chart that helps them easily find and interpret the information they need.

Below, we’ll review common data questions and the best chart for each.

Goal: Compare dimensions or categories

Bar charts compare metrics using vertical or horizontal bars, and allow you to compare discrete quantities of different categories.

Tip: To compare differences between categories, use bar charts only with a reasonable number of data points, such as up to 12, to keep comparisons visually clear.

Goal: Track changes or trends over time

A line chart can easily help depict the relationship between two or more variables over time.

Similarly, an area chart can help you discover correlations within a dimension.

Goal: Highlight a single, critical metric

A scorecard shows a total for a single metric.

This won’t be grouped with any dimension, but will be impacted by filter controls.

Scorecards may include a comparison to a previous time period, indicating increases or decreases.

Goal: Understand the composition of a whole set of data

Pie charts compare the parts of a whole, and are most helpful when comparing only two or three values. Use cautiously; be careful not to present a comparison of two . pie charts indicating that the size of the pie may be different.

Goal: Visualize Data in the real world

A geo map provides an easy way to visualize how a measurement varies across a geographic area. To use a geo map, your data set needs to have geo data, such as latitude, longitude, or Adwords criteria ids.

Goal: Discover relationships between variables

Scatter and bubble charts help you identify a correlation or lack of correlation between data points.

These charts show your data as points or circles on a graph using X (left to right) and Y (top to bottom) axes.

Scatter charts can include a trend line that shows how the variables in the chart are related.

Goal: See how well your data performs against a target

A bullet chart (or “thermometer graph”) gives you a way to quickly see how well a given metric is performing against target benchmarks. This only measure horizontally.

Bullet charts are often used in dashboards to provide meter or gauge-like widgets that monitor various “health” or performance KPI (key performance indicators).

Use templates

Report templates can save you a lot of time in creating new data visualizations!  Data Studio comes with a number of report templates available on the home page, each of which are designed with a specific type of data set in mind to help you quickly and efficiently visualize your own data in a ready-made, fully-designed report.

Suppose you want to quickly view your website’s performance, which you measure using Google Analytics.  You could look at the available templates and choose one of those that uses Google Analytics data.

  • Begin planning with the audience in mind: What is their goal? What data do they need to inform their next decision?

  • Start with a high-level overview, and then share more granular detail below or on the following pages.

  • Make your report interactive via date range controls, filter controls, and hyperlinks to help your viewer get additional context or drill down to specific information.

  • Customize your theme to establish consistent, branded design across your report.

  • Use color wisely and effectively.

  • Treat similar information similarly, and different information differently.

  • Leverage templates to quickly create a report based on your data of a specific type

  • Make a copy of your own report to use as a template for a new report.

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