Mobile KPIs Dashboard using Google Data Studio

Executive Summary

In this article, we’ll be building a mobile-friendly dashboard using Google Data Studio! Google Data Studio is a great free powerful alternative to Tableau and Power BI. It is a browser-based tool so it makes it easy to collaborate and share dashboards.

The following is an overview of what we’ll be reviewing:

• Connect data source(s)
• Build and size mobile-friendly charts for a pleasant mobile user interface

CREATING THE DASHBOARD

Navigate to https://datastudio.google.com/ and sign in using your preferred Gmail account.

• Click “Create” > “Report”

CONNECT DATA SOURCE

• Next, you will be prompted to connect to a data source, for our example, we will be connecting to a YouTube Data provided sample data source

CANVAS SIZE AND THEMING

• Next, we need to set up our “Theme and Layout” to fit a mobile display
• Adjust the “Canvas Size” to a width of 300px and a height of 1500px. The height can be adjusted to whatever size to accommodate the size of your charts. The width however needs to stay at 300px to accommodate a mobile display.

Theme and Layout > Canvas Size

• For the “THEME” I recommend going with something like “Constellation” since it’s easy on the eyes when viewing
• Note: you can customize the Theme to your liking

THEME > Constellation

CREATING CHARTS

• Mobile dashboards should be simple and straight to the point due to the limited space on a mobile screen. The first 3 visuals on this dashboard are “Score Cards”. These visuals help users understand the metric quickly and easily without having to understand the purpose of the chart.

Add a chart > Scorecard

• For this dashboard example, three scorecards were added. These scorecards are New Subscribers, Lost Subscribers, and Average Watch Time. These KPIs are very important to know when analyzing YouTube channel metrics.

Score Cards for Dashboard

• The following are the configurations for the New Subscribers scorecard. Replicate these steps for each scorecard with their respective “Available Fields”

• The following are charts added as visuals for the dashboard

• The first chart above is a Line Chart that shows the Average Watch Time for videos on this YouTube channel.
• The second Line Chart above shows the number of views on the YouTube channel by Day
• The following is the configuration for the Average Watch Time chart. Replicate these steps for the Views chart.

Settings for the Average Watch Time chart

• Next, we need to add a data controller for the user. Select “Add a control” > “Date range control” to place a date controller for the dashboard.

Date range controller

Date range controller on the dashboard

END PRODUCT

• After completing all these steps you should have a dashboard like the following!

Dashboard

• The beauty of Google Data Studio is that it has the same easy to share features of G Suite now known as Google Workspace. So share away and show everyone your awesome dashboard(s)!