Data Destinations and Your Plan

Looker Studio

Pros

1. Automated reports that can be accessed from anywhere. You can set up a report for yourself or a client that will update itself, send you email alerts, and can be accessed from your home, work, or mobile phone.

2. Share and edit permissions easily. Sharing is as easy as entering email addresses and you can edit each user's permission so that nobody makes changes to the report by accident.

3. Ideal for dashboarding and visual storytelling. Looker Studio has a wide variety of widgets, filters, selectors, and "drill-down" options for vivid, interactive presentations.

4. Preset analyses to save time.

5. No limit to the metrics and dimensions you can analyze or the number of report pages you can create. You can also add up to 50 widgets per page.

6. Beautiful pre-made Power My Analytics Templates. We make a lot of easy-to-use templates for Looker Studio if you are having difficulty getting started on your own. You can easily add your own branding and color schemes and let us do the rest.

7. Connect to Google Sheets or Google Analytics. Display data that you've blended and manipulated with other tools.

Cons

1. Blending limitations. Looker Studio can only blend a maximum of 5 different data sets and it is difficult to troubleshoot blending errors. If you need to do a lot of data blending, it may be easier to begin in Google Sheets and then connect that data to Looker Studio.

2. Inaccessible for offline viewing and editing. For now, Looker Studio only works online.

3. Cannot connect to Excel. It can, however, connect to Google Sheets.

4. Cannot pull data that takes more than 6 minutes to load. Power My Analytics warehouses your data, which may decrease the time it takes to load data. This can help with loading times and make Looker Studio available to more data connections.

Google Sheets

Pros

1. Scheduled refreshes and automatic email updates. With our add-on, you can schedule daily refreshes and email alerts so that your reports are ready on time for you and shared with all of the right people.

2. Easy blending capabilities. With tables and basic functions like VLOOKUP, you can blend data from multiple sources. There is no limit to the number of sources you can blend in Google Sheets.

3. More detailed data than Looker Studio. In Google Sheets, you can see and categorize data by device type (mobile, desktop, tablet, etc.)

4. Easily connect completed sheets to Looker Studio. Make dashboard reports after you've blended and manipulated your data.

5. No limit to the metrics and dimensions you can analyze.

6. Share and edit permissions easily. Sharing is as easy as entering email addresses and you can edit each user's permission so that nobody makes changes to the report by accident.

Cons

1. Row and worksheet limits. We've never had a customer run out of rows and worksheets in Google Sheets, but there is a limit. If you need more rows and worksheets than you can get with Google Sheets, Excel might be a better tool for you.

2. Start from scratch. With Google Sheets, you start with a blank page and we do not offer premade templates at this time. However, if you need a template, feel free to set an appointment with our Professional Services Team and we can make one for you.

3. Fewer pleasing graphics than Looker Studio. 

4. More difficult to navigate. Spreadsheets can be massive. Your client may have difficulty locating the data you wanted to show them, or they may scroll past it.

5. Requires more technical understanding. It takes a little while to learn how to make good reports in Google Sheets and if you're a beginner to spreadsheets, it may take some time to familiarize yourself with formulas and blending.

Excel

Pros

1. Easy blending capabilities. With tables and basic functions like VLOOKUP, you can blend data from multiple sources. There is no limit to the number of sources you can blend in Excel.

2. Can handle more data than other reporting tools.

3. Unlimited worksheets. The number of worksheets you can make is limited only by your system's resources.

4. More detailed data than Looker Studio. In Excel, you can see and categorize data by device type (mobile, desktop, tablet, etc.)

5. No limit to the metrics and dimensions you can analyze.

6. Share and edit permissions easily. Sharing is as easy as entering email addresses and you can edit each user's permission so that nobody makes changes to the report by accident.

Cons

1. Excel is not free. You will need to pay for a subscription from Microsoft.

2. Start from scratch. With Excel, you start with a blank page and we do not offer premade templates at this time. However, if you need a template, feel free to set an appointment with our Professional Services Team and we can make one for you.

3. Fewer pleasing graphics than Looker Studio. 

4. More difficult to navigate. Spreadsheets can be massive. Your client may have difficulty locating the data you wanted to show them, or they may scroll past it.

5. Requires more technical understanding. It takes a little while to learn how to make good reports in Excel and if you're a beginner to spreadsheets, it may take some time to familiarize yourself with formulas and blending.

6. No scheduled refreshes. You will have to go into your report and refresh manually.

7. Cannot connect to Looker Studio.

1. Easy blending capabilities.

2. Compatible with Looker Studio. Blend your data with Google Analytics and then send it to Looker Studio to be displayed beautifully.

3. Easily compare performance of paid traffic sources.

4. Track Return On Advertising Spending (ROAS) by campaigns, groups, and keywords.

5. Create calculated cost metrics.

6. Automatic daily updates.

7. Comes with preset analyses.

8. Easily combine spend with engagement and conversions. Then look at it on Google Analytics or export the data to Looker Studio.

1. Limited to 12 widgets on your dashboard.

2. Reports/dashboards aren't as visually customizable as Looker Studio.

3. Less customizable reports compared to Looker Studio. Reports are more generalized and difficult to focus on specifics.

4. Data manipulation is not as easy and straightforward as it is in Google Sheets or Excel.

5. Limit on compatible metrics and dimensions. Email opens, spam reports, Amazon shopping data, etc. may not be available.

6. Limited hit-level granularity. After 500,000 hits (or sometimes less) Google Analytics will sample a small part of your data and make a general conclusion about the whole. To overcome this limitation, Google Analytics can be upgraded to the paid version, Google Analytics 360. (For more on this subject, you can read Google's article at this link).