What analytics tool would you advise for a simple single player mobile game?

You should try posting this on HARO http://www.helpareporter.com

Try Intercom.io You get visitor level information on how active they are etc.

You'll find that looking at top line revenue alone won't provide much value to you if you are asking the question "Is my advertising spend worth it?" Typically, in advertising I want to know the Lifetime Value of the customer or the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). Then, it boils down to : If I spend $100 to acquire this new customer and he spends $150 over the lifetime of his paid relationship with me then, yes--- my ad spend is worth it. On the other hand: I could spend 10K this month in ads. I could sign up 20K in users/customers/top line revenue. But my data will tell me I spent MORE per customer/user than they are actually worth over the average lifetime. So that's what usually answers the "Is it worth it" question in any advertising scenario. 1. How much to acquire the user? 2. How much does the user spend over the avg lifetime? If it doesn't make sense, it's not worth it, regardless of what your top line revenue tells you. You might find this blog post on cohort analysts valuable as it goes into more detail. (I have no affiliation.) https://apsalar.com/blog/2012/01/how-to-use-cohort-analysis-to-improve-revenue/

I am not exactly sure how Quora does it but I would guess that they use something like Google Analytics. It looks at what percentage of your visitors come back each day, every other day, each week, etc. It's a good metric system that is crucial for building a meaningful web product, and it's almost always positive. If someone comes back to your site regularly each week, or even better each day, it means you're becoming a regular and important part of their life. The problem with any other single metric system is they can be the result of positive or negatives changes to your product. You need to have a near-wholistic picture and Google Analytics can help with that. Tools like Klout and Hubspot are good with the measurement of engagement on a brands different channels (website, facebook, twitter, gplus...) too. Let's chat some more and get down to the heart of this problem. Hopefully I can help you resolve any internal discomfort around the matter.

You mention, that you can code and maintain yourself, and at the same time it sounds like your data can be dispersed across multiple sources. And you want to minimise license cost. In my business we use R a lot for both analysis and reporting. It is free (open source), but you will have to build programs. But it will read any format, and also create output to any destination you want. So you could start off with a mix of R, Excel and pdf, just to get things going. However, it could make sense for you to build a database already so you familiarise yourself with data warehouse thinking, since you want to expand with marketing automation. At that point you will need a database for monitoring response, sales etc. So it is important to build the right foundation as ealy as possible. If you don't want to code, but want point-and-click, there is boatloads of software for that, but probably more license cost (unless you can find open source for that). So If I were you, I would start off with something smaller. After all, you want to focus on the value you create for the business and your colleagues, and the time you save, rather than a smooth IT-infrastructure for this. I have lots of experience building reporting and analysis in the areas you mention, so if you want to discuss further, feel free to set up a call. Good look with your development. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup