Visualize your raw GA data instantly with this Power BI template
Okay, so you’ve implemented SCITYLANA and pulled out loads of nice hit-level data from your Google Analytics account.
Now you want to put all that data to impressive use! But what to focus on and how to get started?
Use this free Power BI template
Although SCITYLANA works with all sorts of tools (BigQuery, Data Studio, Tableau, Targit, Qlik, etc.), we suggest you start with this template for Power BI.
We’ve chosen Power BI as our starter tool, because it’s free, easy to use and extremely versatile when it comes to analyzing, reporting and integrating data.
In this post we’ll give you a quick rundown on the contents of the template. At the end, we’ll also show you how to populate it with your own data.
Overview
The first report tab in the Power BI template gives an high-level view of your traffic.
You can use each visual as a filter. For example, clicking on Organic search in the pie chart will immediately filter all other visuals.
You can also define a custom date range using the slicer in the upper right corner.
Traffic sources
The next tab shows your traffic sources. The bar chart shows all traffic sources, but you can easily filter these by channel grouping using the slicer to the right.
We’ve included a bubble chart showing visit engagement by channel grouping. The y-axis shows the average number of pages viewed by a session, while the x-axis shows the average time spent on each page.
Notice the Organic Search bubble in the upper right corner? These sessions view many pages and spend a long time on the site.
Content usage
What’s special about this report? Well, it shows Hostname (domains) and Page combined with Sessions.
In GA you actually can’t do this. You can’t combine Hostname or Page with Sessions. This is because of the way GA has organized its data storage.
What is great about the report tab below is that you can easily filter your top pages by hostname. Simply click on one of the domains in the bar chart to the left, and you will see the other one changes immediately.
Visiting time
Here you can see traffic during working hours, weekends and even seasons such as summer or winter. Again we’ve gone a bit beyond what you can do in GA. We’ve added a calendar and a time of day dimension with more interesting attributes.
Clickstreams
Now comes our favorite part: Clickstreams! This is kind of the “proof” that we deliver hit-level GA data. Each row is a hit (a pageview or en event).
You can see exactly what individual visitors do!
Geography
Geography: Isn’t that more or less the same as in the GA interface? Not quite! The treemap in the upper left corner divides North Americans into Northeast, West, South, and Midwest. Yet this dimension doesn’t exist in GA!
Technology
Waiting for another surprise? Well, this one is not that special, but nonetheless useful. It shows statistics on devices, browsers and operating systems.
How to use the template with your own data
- Sign up for and implement SCITYLANA (it’s free!)
- Start a new data extraction so that your GA data is downloaded to your hard drive
- Download and install Power BI Desktop (it’s free!)
- Download and open our Power BI template
- Enter the path of the data folder (the destination you chose during step 2)
Now it’s your turn 🙂 Do you have ideas on how to visualize GA data in new interesting ways? Please let us know and we’ll add them to the template.