Tangential but... "Analytics" is rarely useful or unuseful because of the tool. These tools need to be treated as data collection, not reporting. If your goal

Tangential but... "Analytics" is rarely useful or unuseful because of the tool. These tools need to be treated as data collection, not reporting. If your goal is to inform certain decisions, track success or identify problems... a spreadsheet (or napkin) is usually where that happens. Say you do analysis systematically, make a list of questions and use your tools to answer them... usually you find that the tool itself doesn't matter much, and GA doesn't answer most of your questions out-of-the-box anyway. Say you want a "funnel." That usually consists of a handful of data points. GA usually doesn't have them by default, without tinkering configuration, etc. Decide what they are beforehand. Understand them. Use GA (or whatever) to get the data. Finding the tool for the job is much easier once you know what the job is. GA is extremely noisy, bombarding users with half-accurate, half-understood reports.