As an online business owner, do you often feel overwhelmed trying to parse endless tables and charts from your Google Analytics reports? Do you wish you could understand your website traffic patterns at a glance? Do you want simplified yet powerful ways to communicate key metrics and insights with stakeholders across your organization?
If so, infographics provide the perfect solution.
In this comprehensive guide, you‘ll discover easy-to-master tools to turn raw GA data into visually-engaging infographics packed with business insights.
Why Infographics Matter for Your GA Reporting
While tables excel at displaying granular data, research shows that human brains process visual storytelling 60,000x faster.
"Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have the ability to identify images very quickly. An infographic puts those pictures neatly in place for rapid comprehension."
– Ann Bovee, Digital Graphic Designer
In business terms, a study by Social Media Today demonstrated 68% higher viewer retention for infographics over written posts.
Infographics artfully spotlight your Google Analytics trends and key learnings.
4 Big Benefits of Infographics over GA Reports
- **Faster data comprehension**: Identify trends and changes instantly vs. scrutinizing complex reports.
- **Wider internal sharing**: Enable data visibility across teams beyond just analysts digging into details.
- **Deeper business insights**: Creative visual perspectives reveal key behaviours that tabular reporting might miss.
- **Enhanced decision making**: Crucial context on diagnostics and predictions vs. purely historical evaluations.
For most website owners, GA dashboards become just cryptic tables showing traffic volumes. Infographics tell a captivating story making your website data far more accessible, interpretable and actionable.
Google Data Studio: Flexible Custom Analytics Reporting
Google Data Studio provides a free yet powerful solution to transform raw analytics data into customized dashboards. With a little upfront effort, you gain unlimited flexibility to showcase key metrics just how you like.
Specifically, Data Studio empowers you with:
Direct connections to data sources: Integrate information from GA, Adwords, Sheets, MySQL and more under one roof. Blend data for richer insights.
Fully customizable templates: Start from scratch or modify pre-built templates tailored to your reporting needs.
Interactive charts and graphs: Choose from a variety of smart visualization formats – combo charts, tables, gauges etc.
Scheduled refresh: Set reports to automatically update ensuring information is always current.
Sharing and permissions: Selectively share or publicly embed dashboards while setting data access rules.
Let‘s examine how Data Studio transforms raw GA data into captivating stories.
Architecting the Foundation
Log into Google Data Studio and navigate to the Reports section. Click + New Report and select Blank Report as we build this from scratch.
First connect to GA under the Data Source tab searching for Google Analytics. Authorize and configure your account access.
Back on the report canvas, drag standard metrics like Users, Sessions, Pages/Session from the right rail onto placeholders. For a historical perspective, pick Year ago comparisons from Style tab.
Enhancing through Visualizations
Let‘s make things more interesting. Insert visualizations like Area Charts, Tables, Geo Maps to spotlight key trends.
Some ideas:
- Site Usage over Time
- Traffic by Location
- Top Content Drill-Down
- User Engagement Funnel
Spruce up your data story with captions, colors and formatting customizations from menu.
Administering for Broader Access
Under the Report tab, you can add report titles, descriptions and images. More importantly, manage permissions and access rules on who can view or edit.
Share read-only snapshot links or embed code for public display. Schedule emails to automatically dispatch PDF exports as well.
Check out the Data Studio Gallery for more professionally designed templates.
Whatagraph: Automated Infographic GA Reporting
Data Studio grants unbridled power for custom reports but assumes design proficiency. Whatagraph provides simpler automated generation of beautifully formatted infographics.
- **Direct GA integration**: Real-time data sync removes manual exports or updates.
- **Designer templates**: Pre-built themes transform metrics into graphics around traffic drivers, geo performance and more.
- **Comparative context**: Call out key trends against past periods or performance benchmarks.
- **Scheduled distribution**: Export and share infographic snapshots over email, Slack or FTP as online visuals or PDFs.
Whatagraph matches metrics to graphical elements. You customize infographic layouts through drag-and-drop while the tool handles visualization best practices.
Let‘s view a sample infographic report from Whatagraph with common GA metrics:
Notice how it prominently features key details like top pages and geo traffic while keeping less vital statistics peripheral.
Infogram: Creative GA Visualizations
Infogram focuses specifically on crafting creative infographics. While you don‘t quite get automated generation, hundreds of templates make professional visuals easy.
- **Import GA data**: Infogram connectors fetch latest metrics.
- **Drag-and-drop editor**: Intuitively assemble designs matching your brand style.
- **Animated infographics**: Add visual intensity and storytelling flair through motion.
- **Interactive features**: Enable drill-downs into charts and graphs for deeper insights.
- **Varied sharing formats**: Export as videos, PDFs, slides and custom formats.
Dedicated infographic tools like Infogram enable far richer data storytelling over standard reporting interfaces.
Here‘s an Infogram sample visualizing GA user journeys and conversions:
Notice the proportional representation of drop-offs through the purchase process. This reveals improvement areas missed in standard metrics.
Databox: Unified GA Command Center
Whereas other platforms focus purely on infographics, Databox consolidates business-critical analytics across GA, marketing channels and further:
- **Unified visibility**: Monitor data from 150+ sources including GA, Salesforce, Marketo etc.
- **Alert notifications**: Real-time warning on fluctuations or drops in key metrics.
- **Anomaly detection**: AI determines statistically significant changes versus normal deviations.
- **Flexible reporting**: Custom packages tailored across teams – marketing, product, finance etc.
- **Predictive analytics**: Statistical models forecast outcomes allowing preemptive actions.
Databox positions itself as the command center integrating information vital to your business and enabling faster actions.
Here is a sample Databox dashboard with key GA website metrics:
Notice the clean consolidated view across visitors, conversions, traffic channels etc. in a single visual.
Bonus Tools for Creative GA Visuals
The platforms we‘ve explored make infographics approachable even without Visualization expertise. But the possibilities grow exponentially with dedicated creative tools:
- **Visme**: Robust graphics with animated and interactive features.
- **Canva**: Excellent starter option with simple drag-and-drop editor.
- **Tableau**: Heavy-duty enterprise analytics visualization powerhouse.
- **Qlik**: Platform for complex interative data discovery.
The goal is balancing ease-of-use and sophistication based on the consumer personas – analysts, executives, end customers etc.
Let Your Website Stories Unfold Visually
Google Analytics provides immense amounts of visitor and performance data. Tables grant perspective but often fail to spotlight crucial user trends and insights. Creative infographic visualizations artfully analyze and share your website stories with impact.
In this guide, we explored popular tools like:
- **Data Studio** for fully customized dashboards.
- **Whatagraph** for automated infographic reporting.
- **Infogram** optimizing for visual discovery.
- **Databox** as the analytics command center.
Each platform caters to a different balance of simplicity, automation and customization. Evaluate your resources and audience needs to determine the best fit.
Just remember that regardless of technology, insight derivation equals fast detection combined with easy comprehension. Help your audiences grasp website analytics patterns at a glance through infographics.
Now dig into the untapped stories within your GA data using these visualization guides. I‘m confident newly unlocked growth opportunities lie ahead based on the experiences across our client portfolio spanning startups, SMBs and market leaders.
What visualization ideas do you plan to try first? Are there additional challenges you face making sense of Google Analytics? Let me know in the comments!
