Matches made in heaven, or power couples as we called them in college, only come along once in a while. I'm talking about when those two people who everyone has a crush on gets together, the ones with perfect bone structure, infectious personalities, and great style. The ones that everyone sees and thinks, "Wow, their kids are going to be beautiful."
Well one of those couples was just created in the tech world with the pairing of Power BI and Google Analytics, and their millions of little data children will definitely by beautiful.
Near the end of March, Microsoft announced that Power BI would now be able to integrate with Google Analytics. Over the last few weeks, users have been discovering the numerous benefits of this integration and have found it to be incredibly useful, especially for companies with a large e-commerce presence.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a must-have tool for any business with a website. It's crucial to monitor your web traffic, to gain an understanding of who is visiting your site, how they found it, and what they do once they are on your site. Unfortunately, Google Analytics data can sometimes end up on an island by itself, disconnected from the rest of the data sources businesses regularly monitor. And any data sources that is not easily accessible or able to communicate with other data sources is not a very useful one.
See all of your website traffic data right alongside your sales data in Power BI
Integrating Google Analytics with Power BI solves both of these problems. By importing Google Analytics data into your Power BI dashboard, you can see all of your website traffic data right alongside your sales data, CRM data, and any other data source you have connected to in Power BI. Not only can you see all of your important data in one place, but you can combine web traffic data from Google Analytics with data from other internal sources to gain a more accurate "big picture" view of how your website interacts with the rest of your business cycle.
Power BI's visualizations make Google Analytics data easier to understand
Plus, Power BI's intuitive visualizations make your Google Analytics data easier to understand. As reported by the Power BI blog, a Power BI user from Powered Solutions shared a screenshot of what his Power BI dashboard looked like when he connected it to Google Analytics - and this is right out of the box!
No offense to the developers at Google, who have made an incredibly powerful, detailed software in Google Analytics, but sometimes it's hard to find the insights you need amidst the myriad of numbers and graphs in GA. But when Power BI works its visualization magic, insights become immediately apparent on your dashboard.
Use Power Query to ask natural language questions
Another benefit to using Power BI to analyze your Google Analytics data is that you can use Power Query to ask natural language questions about your data and receive answers in the form of graphs. Rather than searching through the various reports and tabs in Google Analytics to find what you need, you can just ask Power BI, "How many new users visited this page in the last month?", and Power BI will show you with a graph.
More information on Power BI and Google Analytics
The folks over at the Power BI blog give some more in-depth details about how to get the most out of the Power BI/Google Analytics integration in their write-up here, but even without any adjustments, the insights and visualizations provided right out of the box are extremely useful.
While we can only envy most power couples from afar, we can all enjoy the benefits of the perfect match of Power BI and Google Analytics (which is available to try for free on the Power BI site). Now, feel free to go back to turning green with envy over the real celebrity power couple, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, and their gorgeous new baby.
If you have any questions about business intelligence, Power BI vs other platforms, or are curious how BI technology can help your business succeed, contact us here.
Your Colorado Microbrew Recommendation:
Fort Collins Brewery's Chocolate Stout
ABV: 5.3% IBU's: 33
Chocolate stouts are starting to become more commonplace, but FCB's depth of experience in brewing this specialty beer set it apart from the rest. It's smooth, roasty flavor is balanced our perfectly by its subtle hoppy bitterness, leading it to win the 2010 National Beer Championship for the Gold, Chocolate/Cocoa category. Plus, FCB even provides a recipe online for using it to make Chocolate Stout Mushroom Gravy!
