Make your data dashboards sizzle

Are your data dashboards seeming a bit…bland? Ready to add some heat?

In this hands-on workshop, we'll go a little "off-recipe" and push beyond the default capabilities of Data Studio (formerly Looker). You’ll learn how to enhance your tracking with Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager — and start building reports that answer more meaningful, nuanced questions.

We'll layer in richer user and session attributes — like device, location and behavioral patterns — to help you segment audiences and uncover insights such as:
What videos are being watched by prospective students vs. current students vs. employees?

• What headlines are alumni and donors clicking on?
• What is the sitewide click-through rate for event promotions?
• Which navigation items get the most engagement across all pages where they appear?
• How many users experience the expanded desktop menu vs. the collapsed mobile version?
• Did recent page updates impact impressions for enrollment-related queries?

If your reports are starting to slow down or crash out, we'll bring in a powerful sous chef: Google BigQuery. You'll get an introduction to using BigQuery to process and structure your data — especially Google Search Console data — so your dashboards stay fast, flexible and insightful.

We’ll review a series of advanced dashboards and then walk step-by-step through how they’re built — from data collection in Tag Manager, to processing in BigQuery, to visualization in Data Studio. You'll also have time to work on your own reports, ask questions and get guidance.

Ingredients for success:

• Working familiarity with dashboards in Data Studio and/or reporting in GA4.
• Access to your organization's GA4, GTM, Data Studio and BigQuery accounts (or a test environment set up in advance — details will be provided prior to the session).

Yield:

• A clearer understanding of how data flows across GTM, GA4, BigQuery and Data Studio.
• Practical techniques for building more advanced, insight-driven dashboards.
• An introduction to using BigQuery to transform and prepare your data.
• "Recipe cards" you can take back and use to recreate the reports covered in the session.