Good overview Derek A couple of things i would add are
1. GA is fantastic but we run a lot of sites without it simply because
the data is being used with some tools to reverse engineer seo and ppc campaigns. In most cases this will not matter too much
right now but this access as well as the big G seeing what is converting and in their big brother way potentially controlling the
universe i tend to favour AW stats in cpanel that works with server logs but produces similar data without third party prying eyes.
2. If you are running an adwords ppc campaign as well as seo it is important to set GA to segment the 2 sources, it is easily done
in the settings but doesn't happen naturally.
3. Not relevant to most people but we have recently been setting up multiple users for a GA account, for example where a company
wants several staff(eg marketing manager,sales manager etc) to be able to see the stats and have access but only one person is set
up as admin hence able to tamper with it.