Creating and Customizing Scorecard KPI in Google Data Studio

Your firm or area of activity's condition or success can be measured by a single statistic on a scorecard. When it comes to sales, for example, a scorecard keeps track of everything from the number of ad impressions to the number of purchases.

In Data Studio, scorecards show as numbers and, if necessary, the metric's name is summarized. Your data source's setting for the measure determines how the displayed value is formatted.

Let's imagine this is our data source:

We can have below scorecards from this data source:

How to add a scorecard?

On the toolbar, click on the "Add a chart" button afterwards select "Scorecard".

You can observe an example scenario below. Please note some additional tweaks which can be done after adding a scorecard.

Chart Settings

Click on the chart, afterwards on the right, use the properties panel to change the chart options.

Data Tab

This tab shows settings related to the data source.

Data source: A data source lets you to connect to the data set you want to use. Data source options are: change the data source, view/edit the data source, add a blended data source. More on how to connect a new data source is here.

Metric: Metrics are used to measure the contents of dimensions and provide the chart with a numeric scale and data series. Drag fields from the Available Fields tab on the right onto the chart to add measurements. You can also click Add metric in the Data tab.

Optional metrics allows you to select more than 1 metric and viewer will able to change them.

Metric Slider gives the viewer an option to filter desired metric value to view. For example, you can limit the chart to only show Average Orders where the total value is between $100 and $200. (not all charts offer this option)

At least 1 metric is required. You can have up to 20 metrics in a single-dimensional graphic. One metric can be used for charts with two dimensions.

Default date range: This lets you set the timeframe for an individual chart*.* When this is changed, this specific chart's date range overrides the date range of the page. Default date range options:

• Auto: Applies the date frame of the dashboard if there is a data selector. If not, then tries to include all data.
• Custom: This allows you to specify a custom date range for the chart by using the calendar widget.
• Date compare type: Type of date comparison: Shows data from the given time period for comparison.

Filter: Filter help filter the raw data which is coming from the data source. It might be helpful when you want to include specific values or exclude some. For example, you might want to exclude ad campaigns with zero impressions.

Google Analytics segment: This option appears for charts based on a Universal Analytics data source. A segment is a subset of your Analytics data. You can apply segments to your Data Studio charts to help ensure that your Data Studio and Google Analytics reports show the same data.

Style tab

The style properties of a chart determine how the chart is displayed.

Conditional formatting: It is to evaluate a chart against one or more rules that you set. Once a rule condition is met, your setting is applied to the data, making it easy for the user to observe the changes that have occurred. When the format requirements are completed, pick + Add and then the rules, color, and style you want to apply.

Primary metric: Control how the scorecard shows your data.

• Compact Numbers: This setting lets user round numbers and displays its unit indicator accordingly. For example, 553.939 becomes 553.9K.
• Decimal Precision: A metric value's decimal precision can be set here.

Missing Data: This option is visible when your dimension has missing data. There are 3 options: line to zero, line breaks, linear interpolation (Google Data Studio connects 2 points before and after the missing point)

Labels: Change the appearance of labels. Always double-check as a viewer after making changes. Too small or large fonts might overlap from the borders or might look too small to read.

• Font colour: Changes the font colour of the scorecard label.
• Font size: Setting for the size of the font of the scorecard label.
• Font family: Setting for the font family of the scorecard label.
• Hide Metric Name: Makes the default metric name hidden (which comes from the data source). You can use the Text tool to add a custom metric label.
• Alignment: Align the metric name, primary value, and comparison value.

Background and border: The chart's background container can be customized using the background and border settings.

• Background: Specifies the chart background colour.
• Border Radius: The chart's backdrop will have rounded edges if you use the Border Radius setting. The background form has 90-degree corners when the radius is zero. In order to create a circular shape, a boundary radius of 100° is needed.
• Opacity: Specifies the chart's transparency. 100% opacity completely hides objects behind the chart. 0% opacity makes the chart invisible.
• Border Color:  Specifies the chart border colour.
• Border Weight: Changes the chart border line thickness.
• Border Style: Changes the chart borderline style.
• Add border shadow: Adds a shadow to the chart lower and right borders.

Padding: Use these options to adjust the line height and left, right, and top padding within the chart.

Chart Header: Viewers can take a variety of activities on the chart, including exporting the data, diving down or going to the Explorer tool.  You can choose a show on hover - which is the default, always show and do not show.