Last Updated: May 28, 2025

The following are some best practices for creating a report in Looker Studio:

1. Understand who your report is meant for.
2. Keep it short and simple.
3. Use a report template whenever you can to create a new report.
4. Avoid pulling data directly from a data platform into your reports.
5. Avoid charting data for the current day in your Looker Studio reports.
6. Avoid using functions and calculated fields in your Looker Studio reports.
7. Distribute related charts across multiple pages.
8. Add a date range control to Looker Studio reports.

#1 Understand who your report is meant for.

Before you create and send any report, always ask yourself the following three questions:

• Why am I reporting, what am I reporting? I am reporting because …..
• How does this affect the recipient(s)? I am presenting this report to the board of directors because ……
• What actions recipient(s) should take on the basis of this report? I am presenting this report so that he takes this action ………

For example, when you choose to report ‘bounce rate’ to a CEO, what actions do you want him to take?

• Do you want him to optimise the marketing campaigns and reduce the bounce rate?
• Do you want him to fire the marketing manager because he is responsible for bringing crappy traffic to the website?

If you can’t think of any action that the CEO should take on the basis of the bounce rate, then why are you reporting the bounce rate?

As we move up in an organization hierarchy (esp. in big companies) we tend not to bug senior management with minute details.

Minute details are for the managers (because they have to manage the campaigns) or for the colleagues (because they are directly working on optimising the campaigns).

Therefore, we should avoid presenting tactical dashboards (such as copy-paste versions of Google Analytics screenshots) to senior management and instead present them with business bottom-line impacting insights, preferably in a few lines of plain English.

#2 Keep it short and simple.

I can’t put enough stress on the importance of simplicity. If your reports are not easy to understand, they won’t have any impact. It is as simple as that.

Stay away from using industry jargon and ambiguous words as much as possible.

If you can’t avoid using a technical term, explain it first each time you use it. Do not assume people already know about it because you trained them once.

It took me several days to successfully retain the definition of a bounce rate in my memory when I first started playing with web analytics.

So these technical terms are not as easy to remember as you may think, esp. for the people who know little to nothing about web analytics.

Present less fluff and more substance. If your reports are ten pages long then no one is going to read them let alone take any action.

#3 Use a report template whenever you can to create a new report.

If you create a new report from scratch, then you would need to spend a lot of time creating the layout and format of your report.

You would need to spend a lot of time creating and bringing individual report components (such as tables, scorecards, charts, etc.) together in a way that is visually appealing, while also making your report meaningful and easy to understand.

However, if you use a report template, then you just need to do two things (most of the time):

1. Change the data source.
2. Do some minor cosmetic changes to the report (like changing the name of the report, adding your company logo, etc).

#4 Avoid pulling data directly from a data platform into your reports.

99% of Looker Studio users make these 4 mistakes, which make Looker Studio a lot harder and more expensive to use.

1) Pulling data directly from a marketing platform into Looker Studio and then trying to manipulate it there.

2) Wasting time and money on buying and using Looker Studio connectors to make mistake number 1.

3) Trying to use Looker Studio as a spreadsheet/data warehouse when it is mainly for data visualisation.

4) Using Looker Studio formulas and functions to make mistake number 3.

Looker Studio is not meant for data manipulation. It is neither a spreadsheet nor a data warehouse.

When you manipulate data (aggregation, mathematical calculations, manipulating string data, etc.) in Looker Studio, it slows down your report. This is especially true for large data sets.

Manipulating data in a spreadsheet (like Google Sheets) or data warehouse (like BigQuery) is much easier than manipulating data in Looker Studio.

When you choose to manipulate data in Looker Studio, you make it unnecessarily hard to use.

That is why we first pull the data from a data platform into a spreadsheet or data warehouse and manipulate it there, and only then use that data in Looker Studio.

I first pull data from GA4, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and other sources into Google Sheets. Then, manipulate the data before sending it to Looker Studio.

I may use BigQuery. But most of the time, Google Sheets works just fine.

I do not buy and use ‘N’ connectors to pull data from ‘N’ data platforms.

I don’t need to worry about whether a data platform-specific connector is available or working correctly.

Likewise, I don’t use Looker Studio functions and calculated fields.

Using functions in calculated fields can greatly increase the load time of your reports in the Looker Studio.

Even using calculated fields can greatly increase the load time of your Looker Studio reports.

I don’t do data blending in Looker Studio.

If I want to blend data, I would either use Google Sheets or BigQuery.

One of the biggest disadvantages of manipulating data in Looker Studio is the lack of reusability and portability.

When you create complex calculated fields, custom dimensions, filters, or blended data within Looker Studio, they are tied to that specific report.

You cannot reuse those transformations across multiple reports or dashboards.

If you need to build another dashboard with similar logic, you will have to recreate all the calculated fields manually.

If a logic or calculation needs to be updated, you will need to update every report individually, which can lead to version control nightmares and inconsistency.

The better approach is to do your transformations in Google Sheets or BigQuery, where you can version, modularise and reuse logic across multiple reports.

If you want to manipulate data, do it in Google Sheets or BigQuery. Do not use Looker Studio for that purpose.

#5 Avoid charting data for the current day in your Looker Studio reports.

By default, Looker Studio uses Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) standard time. 

If your dataset/datasource doesn’t use UTC, you may see discrepancies when charting data for the current day (due to differences between UTC and your timezone).

Such discrepancies increase significantly when you live farthest from London (like in Australia, New Zealand, etc.), where the time difference between UTC and your timezone is pretty big.

So, if you live in Australia and pull the data for the current day (from a dataset that uses a different time zone, such as ‘UTC’) in Looker Studio, it may not show you any data for ‘today’. 

Moreover, I don’t see any real benefit of analysing an incomplete data set. So, avoid charting data for the current day in Looker Studio.

For more details, check out this article: Google Sheets & Looker Studio Timezone Conversion.

#6 Avoid using functions and calculated fields in your Looker Studio reports.

I don’t use Looker studio functions and calculated fields.

Using functions in calculated fields can greatly increase the load time of your reports in the Looker Studio.

Even using calculated fields can greatly increase the load time of your Looker Studio reports.

I don’t do data blending in Looker Studio.

If I want to blend data, I would either use Google Sheets or BigQuery.

If you want to manipulate data, do it in Google Sheets or BigQuery. Do not use Looker Studio for that purpose.

#7 Distribute related charts across multiple pages.

By default, a Looker Studio report is made up of only one page. But you can add multiple pages to a Looker Studio report. Additional pages provide a mechanism to reduce the complexity of any given page. 

It could be tempting to add all of your charts and other components onto one page. 

However, spreading out your report across multiple pages helps in minimising the complexity of any given page. It makes your report much easier to consume. 

#8 Add a date range control to Looker Studio reports.

Adding a date range control to your reports gives the report viewers more accessibility, as they can select the date range for which they want to view the performance.

You can add a date range control to your report by following the steps below.

Step-1: In the Looker Studio report toolbar, click on ‘Add control’.

Step-2: Select the date range control and place it on the reporting canvas.