Connect Google Analytics 4 to Looker Studio : How-to, templates and metrics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is one of the must-have tools if you need to drive a business through a website. It will give you plenty of insight into your visitors:

• Where do they come from?
• Where do they land on your website?
• Do they come back?
• How many pages did they visits?
• Which page makes your users stay or leave?

And many more about their comportment. You can even create custom events to follow your particular website funnel.

But GA4 can be confusing to present and explore your data. That's why you can use Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to help you create unique dashboards and reports about your essential KPIs.

Looker Studio is an excellent tool that allows you to easily create custom reports using drag&drop into a canvas to display charts, tables, and maps.

You can use templates to quickly get a custom design and adapt it to fit your need. A link to a great template is at the end of this article.

We will see how to link your Google Analytics 4 account to Looker Studio and create your first charts here.

Create a Looker Studio data source:

The first thing to do in Looker Studio is to create a new data source. It will be the link between Looker Studio and your Google Analytics 4 account.

Follow these steps to create your data source:

• Click this link to be redirected to the Catchr Google Analytics 4 connector.
• Go through the three authorization steps:

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• Select the Google Analytics 4 view you wish to use on Looker Studio.
• Uncheck "Use report template for new reports" if you want to start with a blank canvas.
• Click Connect at the top right.

Congratulation, you just created your first GA4 data sources on Looker Studio. This new page shows you all the dimensions and metrics available in the GA4 connector. You can use all these fields to create a report.

To learn more about this interface, follow this link to a great tutorial.

Now, we must create a new report and complete it with charts!

Create a new report from your Looker Studio data source:

From your data source page, click Create Report at the top right. You will be redirected to a new page with a blank canvas. It is your interface to create your new dashboard. 

You can find a detailed explanation of this new page here. I recommend quickly reading it to be familiar with the next part. I will use the vocabulary explained on this page.

Now that you are in front of your blank page, it's time to choose what you want to display. What are the essential metrics for my website?

For the example here, I want to know how many session there was on my website. Which pages were visited during these sessions, and where do the visitors come from?

So I'll use these metrics: 

• Sessions: the number of sessions.
• Engaged sessions: sessions lasting at least 10 seconds, making a conversion action or at least two screen views.
• Total users: the number of visitors to my website.
• New users: the number of new visitors.

And these dimensions: 

• Page title: the title of the page 
• Full page URL: URL of the page, to include a direct link in my table.
• Sessions sources: to know where my visitors come from.
• Date: Breakdown by day for my metrics.

Now that we have selected the metrics and dimensions let's add charts to our report.

Add new charts

Add control fields:

The first thing to do for this kind of report is to add a Date Range control field. It will let you select which period your report should show.

To do so: 

• Click Add a control, then Date range selector, 
• Place the control field in the report.

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You can set up a default date range to load your report with. So the first time you open it, it will be on this selected period:

• Select the control field.
• In the right column, change the time range to set up the default configuration.

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Now that we have our first control field let's add some scorecards.

Add a scorecard:

Scorecards are the basic charts in Looker Studio. They let you display a unique metric easily.

We will add a Scorecard for every metric chosen above.

To do so : 

• Click on Add a Chart, then Scorecard. Place it on the canvas.
• In the configuration panel, choose Sessions.

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You can add a small indicator of the rate change compared to the previous period:

• Select the Scorecard 
• In the right panel, look for the Comparison date range under the Default date range section.
• Select the period you want to compare to.

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Now that we have one Scorecard configured, copy and paste it and change the metrics.

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And to finish with the Scorecard, you can use the align features in the right click to get a clean dashboard:

• Select all your Scorecard.
• Right-click on the selection
• Click on Distribute, then Horizontally/Vertically.
• Right-click again on the selection
• Click on Align, then Vertically/Horizontally, and choose the best fit.

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Add table:

 Now let's add tables to breakdown these metrics by Sources and Page titles:

• Click Add a Chart, then Table. Place it on the canvas.
• On the right panel, select the dimension Campaign name.
• Under Metrics, add Sessions and Engaged Sessions.

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Copy and Paste the table, and change the dimension to Sources.

Change the Sort order in the configuration panel for Sessions on both tables, and you will have the top-rated Sources and Page for your Sessions.

Add a times series:

We also want to check on the number of sessions by day. To do so:

• Click Add a Chart, then Time Series.
• Place it on the canvas.
• Under Dimensions, select Date or Day.
• Under Metrics, choose Sessions and Engaged Sessions.

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We can now compare both Sessions and Engaged Sessions over time.

Add some style

Style your charts:

You can search in the Style menu once a chart is selected to personalize every component.

• You can, for example, add a border and a radius to your Scorecard, change the font-size and the alignement.

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• Change the background color and font color.

• Hide the row number and pagination on the table.

• Change the line to a stacked bar in the time series charts.