How We Created Our SaaS Looker Studio Template With GA4 Data

At Analytics Mates, we're passionate about helping businesses across various digital marketing fields to achieve their goals. We understand the unique challenges and opportunities faced by ecommerce stores, B2B companies, solopreneurs, social media influencers, SaaS businesses, and more.  No matter the industry, we work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and build customized GA4 reporting solutions.

In this blog post, we’ll look at  our collaboration with a SaaS company offering a website tool for video editing and repurposing. Their business model relies heavily on free user signups and paid subscriptions, thus, making accurate measurement of this metric is crucial.

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First, the Challenge:

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Incomplete Data Tracking

We began by following our standard onboarding process, which includes in-depth discussions to define their key performance indicators (KPIs) and explore existing data through Google Analytics 4 (GA4).  Here's where we encountered a hurdle: while everything else seemed in order, tracking their user signups wasn't functioning correctly. This happens because the majority of users opt for Google Single Sign-On (SSO) when attempting to sign up.

Then, instead of sending it as a signup event, the client's tracking implementation counts them as signins.

This posed a significant challenge

Understanding signup data is vital for measuring the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and user acquisition strategies. We made sure that the client understood how important this is by sending them a comprehensive document containing information of the benefits of fixing the signups issue. However, the client expressed hesitation in prioritizing a fix. Nonetheless, we found a solution by using an alternative data source called PostHog for product registration + product analytics data. While we also shifted our GA4 tracking to be focused on unique event clicks based on Google’s SSO option and the total amount of registrations.

Our Approach: Tailored Insights Despite Limitations

We understand that every client has unique needs and priorities. While we always recommend comprehensive data collection, we also believe in adapting to specific situations like this one. Here's how we tackled this challenge:

1. We identified the Key Metrics and Data Exploration: We meticulously reviewed their website to identify all crucial user events and ensured smooth data flow into GA4. This allowed us to capture valuable data points beyond signups.
2. We prioritized  KPIs for the Looker Studio Dashboard: With a clear understanding of their business goals, we defined and prioritized other impactful KPIs to be displayed on the dashboard.
3. We made sure that data are aligned by meticulously validating that the data available in GA4 aligned with the information needed for the dashboard, ensuring accuracy and clarity.
4. We built an interactive Looker Studio dashboard allowing the client to filter data by channel (organic search, social media, etc.), location, and demographics. This provided them with a comprehensive view of their website traffic and user behavior.
   

Although we can’t fully report on the user signups, we still included it to the dashboard as we still see its importance. We also matched this against their internal PostHog data during our weekly and monthly check-ins. 

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Empowering Informed Decisions with Actionable Data

By focusing on readily available data, we were able to create a valuable dashboard that delivered key performance insights. The client could visualize metrics like user engagement, content performance, traffic sources, landing page reports, and reports on the best-performing keywords. This empowered them to make data-driven decisions to optimize their website, improve user experience, and ultimately drive more successful user conversions. The SaaS Looker Studio Template consists of the following pages.

1) Overall Performance: This section provides a breakdown of the primary metrics requested by the client for tracking.

2) Channels - In this segment, we analyze the effectiveness of various acquisition channels to identify the most successful ones.

3) Pricing - We assess the performance of different pricing tiers over time to understand their impact.

4) Landing Page + Keywords - Given the client's heavy reliance on SEO, this section highlights the pages experiencing growth in overall traffic and identifies the keywords driving visitors to our site.

Conclusion: Working Together to Achieve Success

This blog post demonstrates the importance of adaptability and client collaboration in data analysis.  Even with limitations, we were able to deliver a valuable solution that empowers informed decision-making.

Our commitment to using readily available data has resulted in the development of a powerful dashboard that serves as a basis for informed decision-making. Through the visualization of essential metrics that span user engagement, content performance, traffic sources, landing page effectiveness, and keyword performance, we have equipped the client with the tools necessary to navigate the complexities of their online presence. Empowered by these insights, they are ready to not only optimize their website but also enhance the overall user experience, leading to a tangible increase in successful conversions. As we continue to support them on their journey, we remain dedicated to providing actionable insights that drive sustainable growth and success in their digital marketing efforts.

Thank you for reading!

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What are your biggest challenges when it comes to data analysis for your website? Share your thoughts here.

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Are you ready to unlock similar data-driven insights for your business? We can help you. 

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