Online stores have become a common way of doing business today. They have brought much convenience to how businesses promote their brands and how customers purchase items. When running an eCommerce store, you need to know how it is performing. It means that you should track the number of metrics related to the online store. The best way to achieve it is by building a dashboard that shows the metrics in a central place. You can visualize the metrics on the dashboard so that everyone can understand them easily. It is achievable using Google Data Studio.
In this article, you will learn how to build a Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard in a few simple steps.
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
This is what you need for this article:
- A Google Data Studio Account.
What is Google Data Studio?
Today, the world runs on data. Companies and individuals use massive amounts of data to tell a story about the world that surrounds us. Data is a critical component for understanding the health of a business. However, most companies find it difficult to make sense of the massive influx of percentages, numbers, and other data points. Pulling the data together is not enough. It can overwhelm your business and become a source of confusion and misunderstanding. The best way to make sense of this data is by collecting it from different sources and presenting it in a visually-appealing way. Google understands this, and that’s why they developed Data Studio.
Google Data Studio makes the process of reporting easy. With Google Data Studio, you can turn your data into informative dashboards and reports that are fully customizable and can be read and shared easily. Google Data Studio allows you to streamline your reporting process to save time and give your colleagues the right data at the right time. To use Google Data Studio, you only need a Google account and begin to use it for free.
With Google Data Studio, you can collaborate with your colleagues in building a report. Once you have created a report, you can share it with other users. Data Studio provides you with different tools to visualize your data. You can add visualizations to your reports to make the data more understandable by your colleagues and clients. Examples of such tools include line charts, bar charts, and Google Maps.
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What is the Importance of a Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard?
For companies running online stores, Google Data Studio can provide insights into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and powerful eCommerce metrics. This way, companies can track everything, including their best referrers and average order values from a single place. These are powerful insights that can make a huge difference in the amount of revenue that a company generates. Some of the questions that a Google Data Studio Ecommerce dashboard can answer include:
- Why do customers abandon their carts?
- Which marketing channels are giving the best results?
- Which product pages have a lower conversion rate?
Answers to the above questions can help you know where you should make changes to improve the conversion rates. For example, you may find that customers abandon their carts when they are prompted to create an account to checkout. You can consider giving customers a guest checkout option. It may increase your conversion rates and grow your revenue by a big margin.
The following are the key eCommerce metrics that you should track in your Google Data Studio Ecommerce dashboard:
- Total Sales: You should track the total number of sales that you make, and understand what is influencing your sales numbers and why. Pay close attention to all your sales channels and track their performance over time.
- Conversion Rates (CR): CR tells you whether your site visitors are converting to customers or not.
- Add to Cart Rate: This metric will tell you the number of customers who added an item to their virtual shopping cart. You will know whether you attract the right audience to your site, whether your visitors come to your site with a specific goal in mind, and whether your products and their prices meet the expectations of your site visitors.
- Cart Abandonment Rate: You should track the number of people who abandon their carts and the reasons behind them. Some of the reasons that lead to the abandonment of carts are a long process, bad site user interface, shipping costs, etc.
- Average Order Value (AOV): This metric tracks the average dollar amount that is spent each time a customer places an order on the online site. You can calculate this value by dividing the total revenue by the total number of orders.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This metric shows the total revenue that your online site can expect from a single customer account. It can help you come up with customer retention measures for your site.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): CPA measures the aggregate cost of a customer by taking an action (a click or a sale) that leads to this conversion. This metric is important because you don’t have to pay more to acquire a customer than their worth to your business.
- Bounce Rate: The bounce rate will give you the percentage of visitors who leave your site after visiting only one page. A high bounce rate will be an indication that the information on the page isn’t engaging or valuable to the visitor who landed on it.
In the next section, you will learn how to build a Google Data Studio eCommerce dashboard.
How to Build a Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard?
Follow these steps to create your Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard:
- Connect Google Data Studio to your Data Source
- Basic Settings and Adding Scorecards
- Create a Table to Show Product Metrics
- Add a Bar Chart
- Add Time Series
- Add a Line Chart
- Add a Geo Map
- Download Created Dashboard and Share with Others
1. Connect Google Data Studio to your Data Source
It’s now time to load your eCommerce data into Google Data Studio. Follow the steps given below:
Step 1: Open the following URL on your web browser here.
Step 2: You will be prompted to log into your Data Studio account. Login using your Google account.
Step 3: You will be taken to the Reports page of Data Studio which looks as follows:
Step 4: Click the + Create button located on the top left corner of the screen.
Step 5: A new window will popup with 3 options. Choose Data source.
Step 6: You will be taken to a page that shows a list of connectors that you can use to connect to your data source. Various free data source connectors are available in Google Data Studio. BigQuery, Campaign Manager, Google Sheets, Google Analytics, and many more data connectors provided by Google
If you want to connect to Google Analytics, choose the Google Analytics connector.
You can connect to Partner Connectors also. Data Sources like Bing, ActiveCampaign, Microsoft Advertising, and many more are available in Partner Connectors.
Step 7: Choose the account, property, and view, then click the CONNECT button located on the top right corner of the screen.
Step 8: In the next window, click the CREATE REPORT button located at the top right corner of the screen. The data will be loaded into your report.
You have successfully established a connection to the data source.
2. Basic Settings and Adding Scorecards
After connecting to the data source, let’s first rename your file from Untitled Report to some valid name.
You can add header text in your report and customize it as well.
Scorecards are useful in visualizing key performance indicators(KPIs). You can add scorecards to your dashboard.
Click on Add a chart from the menu and select Scorecard from the drop-down list.
3. Create a Table to Show Product Metrics
Now that the data has been loaded in Data Studio, we can create a table that shows the various metrics for the products. Follow these steps to create a table to show product metrics:
Step 1: Click the Insert button from the menu bar.
Step 2: Choose Table from the drop-down menu.
Step 3: The table will be inserted into your dashboard. Click the table and add dimensions and metrics from the properties panel shown on the right side of the screen.
The table will then be updated to include the dimensions and the metrics as shown below:
4. Add a Bar Chart
We can now add a bar chart that shows the various metrics for the products. We will target the key eCommerce metrics that can be used to interact with a potential customer. Examples include product views, add to cart, checkouts, and quantity that is purchased. Follow these steps to add a bar chart:
Step 1: Click the Add a chart button from the toolbar.
Step 2: You will be presented with various options. Move to the bar section and choose the Bar chart.
Step 3: Drag and click inside the dashboard to add the chart.
Step 4: Click the chart and move to the properties window shown on the right side of the screen.
Step 5: By default, the bars come slanting horizontally. Click the STYLE button on the properties window. Choose the chart with vertical bars from the Bar chart section.
Step 6: Choose the dimensions and metrics for the chart from the DATA tab of the Properties window.
The chart will be added to the dashboard as shown below:
5. Add Time Series
Time Series Charts are helpful to visualize trends. Click on Add a Chart then click any one chart under Time series.
6. Add a Line Chart
We can add a line chart that shows the relationship between the number of views on an item and the amount of revenue that is generated. Follow the steps given below to add a line chart:
Step 1: Click the Add a chart button from the toolbar.
Step 2: Choose the Line chart from the line section.
Step 3: Drag and click inside the dashboard to add the chart.
Step 4: Set the dimension and the metric for the chart from the properties panel shown on the right side of the screen.
You have created your line chart as shown below:
7. Add a Geo Map
To know the amount of revenue that is generated from each country, you can use a geo map. It can help you know where you need to scale up your marketing efforts. The following steps can help you to add a geo map to your dashboard:
Step 1: Click the Insert button from the menu bar.
Step 2: Choose the Geo map from the drop-down.
Step 3: Drag and click inside the dashboard to insert the geo map.
Step 4: Move to the properties panel shown on the right side of the screen to set the metric and the dimension for the geo map.
The geo-map will be generated as shown below:
The concentration of the blue color differentiates the amount of revenue generated from product sales in different countries.
8. Download Created Dashboard and Share with Others
You can download your created report as a pdf by clicking Share and then Download report and even secure it with a password.
You can share it with other people as well by clicking Invite people.
What are the Limitations of Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard?
With Google Data Studio, you can create a beautiful dashboard for your eCommerce store. However, you may encounter a challenge when you need to get real-time data from your online store to Data Studio. The reason is that Google Data Studio does not have a connector to pull in real-time data from most data sources. It means that you may have to refresh the data source frequently to get new data into your dashboard.
Google Data Studio will not allow you to track all metrics for your online store. For example, you cannot track a metric such as period comparisons.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned about the importance of having a Google Data Studio dashboard for your online store and how to create a Google Data Studio eCommerce Dashboard. But, if you want to integrate data from multiple sources before analysis, try Hevo.
Hevo is a No-code Data Pipeline. It offers pre-built integrations from 100+ data sources such as Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, etc. Hevo is a reliable, secure, and consistent ETL solution. Give Hevo a try by signing up for a 14-day free trial today.
Share your experience of using Google Data Studio Ecommerce Dashboard in the comment section below.