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The NBA hasn't had a major doping scandal due to a combination of steroids not being as helpful to pro basketball players and the NBA having relatively weak testing (ironically, due to not having a scandal).Here's what we know:Several players have been busted for PEDs, none more high profile than OJ Mayo and Rashard Lewis in recent years.The NBA will tell you it has been vigorously testing for every kind of drug for decades and is just smarter than the other leagues.Congress will tell you this: Under the NBA policy, NBA players face no random testing at all once they complete their rookie year. They are only tested once each year, during their one-month training camp. The policy also fails to cover a vast number of drugs. There are literally dozens of steroids and stimulants that are outlawed in Olympic competition that are still legal for use in the NBA. The policy fails to cover performance enhancers such as human growth hormone or EPO. And it fails to cover designer steroids.”As of 2009, the media reported it this way: Lawmakers on the House Government Reform Committee called the NBA's drug-testing policy "a joke," saying it's weaker than the NFL's or baseball's. As the NBA's steroids policy was branded "pathetic" by lawmakers Thursday, the head of a congressional panel said he will propose a law creating drug-testing standards for the four major professional sports leagues.*There have been no steroid-related illnesses, deaths, or cover-ups involving NBA players.Here's what I think:Although I agree with David Stern's argument that steroids wouldn't have as much as an advantage for an NBA player as they would in other sports, I wouldn't say they'd have no advantage.The healing properties alone would be beneficial to all players recovering from injuries throughout the season, especially as they get older.In the NBA, weight is the enemy. In baseball and football putting on more weight can give you an advantage. In basketball it just kills you. Although there are corner cases for younger players; what you typically hear from veterans is that they're trying to shed weight to offset their declining vertical and burst speed. Most steroids help stamina or muscle gain and neither of those are optimal (although both are useful in the right amounts) for the NBAWhat busted open the steroid story in baseball was a combination of things that are somewhat unique to baseball: strength literally makes a lot of difference in the sport and caused two good players to break one of the most sacred records in all of American sports. I covered that in some detail here: Jonathan Brill's answer to Why are steroids such a big problem in MLB but not in the NBA or NFL?. This is unlikely to happen in the NBA. The records worth chasing are measured over years and require precision, not strength or speed. Making an NBA basket is more like hitting a golf ball than hitting a line drive, and form and balance are more important than strength or speed.I wouldn't be surprised if steroids were used widely throughout the NBA for injury recovery. In my personal opinion, the monetary stakes are too high for this not to be the case. Looking at a player like Mike Miller of the Miami Heat, he's facing medical retirement with three years and $18m left on his contract. Mike has made some money in his career but is unlikely to ever get close to that earning power again. If Mike could cycle some doctor-prescribed HGH a few months after his back surgery and dodge the NBA's congressionally-mocked PED tests (which apparently don't even test for exotics such as HGH) enough to get back to playing shape this season I'd expect him (or a similar player in that position) to do that. At some point the health risks of a slightly risky treatment plan and the entirely manageable risks of getting caught seem trivial compared with that kind of money. As salaries continues to rise and knowledge of how to use HGH and other drugs makes them less risky, I'd expect usage to grow.*http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-696513.html

Below are some of the tools we use, have used, or use for our clients separated by function: Research, Analytics and Testing.CRO Research ToolsSurveyMonkeySurveyMonkey is an online survey software that can help improve customer satisfaction, engagement, and market research by reaching out to different audiences to gain insight into their preferences. Users can create custom surveys, quick polls, or request customer or employee feedback. The free version of the software enables retrieval of demographic information, content surveys, and product feedback.Cost: Freemium. Standard Monthly, Standard Annual, Advantage, and Premier plans are offered at $37, $31, $32, and $99 a month respectively, ranging in advanced features such as additional user accounts, A/B question types, and data extraction through third-party software.UserTestingUserTesting is a user research platform for receiving customer feedback quickly on everything from your site to mobile apps to “real world” experiences. This can be applied extensively to CRO, as participants from your target demographics will provide feedback as they are asked to test certain features or complete specific tasks.UserTesting is useful as a research tool due to its ability to help identify pain points in your customer experience before design decisions are finalized, as well as provide comparative feedback with competitors’ websites. The Pro plans also offer access to a professional services team, which can create research objectives and test plans for your company.Cost: Individual plans with 15 video sessions for $49 each as well as a variety of free testing features, and Pro plans with customizable pricing.Google AdWords Keyword PlannerCRO and SEO (search engine optimization) have a complicated, but undoubtedly strong relationship; elements of SEO research, such as keywords, apply to CRO research as well. For this purpose, the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool is a free-to-use feature within Google AdWords for building strong keyword lists.By using the tool, you can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform by examining historical trends, combine keyword lists to create new ones, and receive click/cost performance forecasts. Filter geographically and by comprehensive criteria like suggested bid, average monthly searches, and competition for the keyword.Cost: Free!UsabilityHub’s Five Second TestIn addition to their click, question, and preference tests, UsabilityHub specializes in five-second user tests that can be used to receive feedback on everything from home page designs to landing pages. Users are asked questions about what they remembered of the pages they were shown after 5 seconds; the tool then generates a word cloud of commonly occurring keywords to provide insight into people's first impressions.Cost: Freemium. Basic, Pro, and Team plans are offered at $79, $199, and $396 monthly for tiered access to split testing, demographics information collection, and accessibility for larger teams.CRO Analytics ToolsKissMetricsKissmetrics is an intelligence platform that lets users determine and track a variety of metrics. Their data model is comprised of 4 core components: people, traits, events, and properties. The platform allows users to segment customers, learn how visitors navigate your website, build data sets and reports, determine campaign ROI, and initiate campaigns.With highly flexible custom data and easy-to-navigate API, Kissmetrics is a solid CRO analytics solution, and additionally incorporates features segmentation and email campaign automation. It also offers several tiered plans; while on the pricier end of the tools in this article, the scope of available features can be well worth the cost if you know how to make the most of them.Cost: The Growth plan costs $500 monthly; Power costs $850 for greater testing and campaign capacity; custom Enterprise plans are call-for-pricing.HotjarHotjar gets right to business with user behavior analytics through recordings and heatmaps, representing their clicks and scrolling behavior digitally as well as showing recorded interactions of visitors with your site pages. Other features include form analysis, feedback polls and surveys, and conversion funnels. In that way, it’s closer to an all-in-one CRO tool with research and testing components in addition to its main analytics goal.Cost: Multiple pricing plans are available within three tiers: Personal, Business, and Agency. From a free Personal Basic plan to an $89 monthly plan for small businesses to a $989 plan for much larger companies, flexibility in price is one of Hotjar’s best assets.Google AnalyticsA benchmark of marketing analytics software, Google Analytics is both highly affordable and packed with features. Traffic tracking, user activity monitoring, funnel visualization, audience reports, flow visualization, and custom analytics are included. Focusing on user friendliness, GA’s approach is to show both high-level, dashboard-type data and more in-depth data further into its reports.Google Analytics 360 is the paid alternative of the tool for large companies in need of high-end functionality. It offers more integrations, advanced funnel reporting, unlimited data, and more custom dimensions and metrics per property. For many companies, however, the cost (or lack thereof) of the basic version of the software is unbeatable.Cost: Free! The 360 software, on the other hand, starts at $150,000 annually.WoopraWoopra is a CRO platform that can help you to better understand your customers’ behavior across multiple devices and touch points by using data to build comprehensive user profiles and automatically updating profiles in real time. Customer Journey Reports map paths taken by users to conversion in order to reveal obstacles and opportunities at each touchpoint, while Retention Reports explore user retention rates and the channels through which they are continuing to interact with your company.The tool also creates customer segments based on demographics and behavior, as well as custom live dashboards based on core KPIs. In addition, Woopra integrates with numerous major third-party apps and sends real-time notifications to your device when customers perform important actions.Cost: Freemium, with up to 30,000 actions a month. Small business plans with varying quantities of actions are available from $80 to $600 monthly, while scalable Enterprise plans, with premium features and integrations, are custom-priced.A/B Testing / Landing Pages ToolsCrazy EggCrazy Egg’s main feature consists of A/B testing, accompanied by Snapshots and Recordings. Snapshots refer to four ways of recording user behavior on your site pages: heatmaps, “confetti” distributions, scrollmaps, and overlays (with the exact number of clicks per element), while Recordings track users’ real-time behavior. In these aspects, the tool is similar to Hotjar.The A/B testing component is designed to be fast and simple, with a page editor to give you the power to change individual elements with ease. While Snapshots and Recordings are limited depending on your plan, A/B tests are uniformly available in unlimited quantity.Cost: Basic, Standard, Plus, and Pro plans cost $29, $49, $79, and $189 respectively, varying mainly in the number of pageviews, snapshots, and recordings per month.UnbounceUnbounce’s platform is built around headline testing and optimization, A/B and multivariate testing, building targeted pop-ups, and “sticky bars” (similar to banner ads.) With geo-targeting and mobile optimization, this may be a good choice for eCommerce marketers. Additionally, Unbounce focuses on custom landing pages, designed with easy editing in mind through the software.Cost: $99 monthly for the Essential plan; $199 and $499+ for the Premium and Enterprise plans respectively, offering greater numbers of landing pages, popups, and “sticky bars.”Visual Website OptimizerVWO has a simple, yet feature-packed platform broken down into a five-step system. Funnel analysis provides a breakdown of conversion rates; digital activity recordings can be used to observe and test visitors interacting with multiple paths on your site, as well as define customer segments of varying complexity; finally, on-page surveys can also provide direct feedback. More importantly, these features allow the tool to shine in its testing capabilities.A/B, multivariate, mobile site, landing page-focused, and split URL testing can all be managed intuitively with the visual design-oriented layout of the software. Combining testing with research and analysis, VWO is testing-oriented, but well-rounded enough to be considered an all-in-one. Understandably, it’s the pricier of the tools in this section.Cost: The Growth plan begins at $299 monthly, with the $599 Pro plan and the custom-priced Enterprise plans offering higher-capacity features for larger companies.Pingdom Website Speed TestThis is a relatively straightforward, yet essential CRO testing tool designed to analyze your site speeds. You can filter by load order, file size, and load times, and review total requests, load time, and page size, or generate a “waterfall chart” of all the individual requests on your web page. Every element of every page can be tracked through your performance history. The tool provides a score out of 100, then outlines next steps to take to increase your speed.Cost: Free!You may also be interested in this blog if you are conducting A/B tests: How to Make the Most of A/B Testing to Increase Your Conversion RatesI hope you found my answer help. Good luck CROing!

According to Small Business Administration research, only half of new businesses survive for the first five years and only one-third of new businesses are able to survive for 10 years. The inverse is compelling as we can conclude that if only 50% of new businesses survive for the first five years, then the other 50% fail in the first five years. We can also conclude that about 65% of new businesses don’t make it to the ten-year mark.Forbes reports an even more grim statistic, based on Bloomberg research, that of every 10 businesses, eight fail within the first 18 months. What are the reasons businesses fail to thrive, given a 50/50 chance of survival and assuming a product or service for which there’s a demand? Let’s discuss six reasons businesses fail and some ways you can avoid business failure.Six Reasons Businesses Fail:1. Leadership Failure.Your business can fail if you exhibit poor management skills, which can be evident in many forms. You will struggle as a leader if you don’t have enough experience making management decisions, supervising a staff, or the vision to lead your organization. Perhaps your leadership team is not in agreement on how the business should be run. You and your leaders may be arguing with each other publicly, or contradicting each other’s instructions to the staff. When problems requiring strong leadership occur, you may be reluctant to take charge and resolve the issues while your business continues to slip toward failure.How to Avoid Leadership Failure: Dysfunctional leadership in your business will trickle down and affect every aspect of your operation, from financial management to employee morale, and once productivity is hindered, failure looms large on the horizon. Learn, study, find a mentor, enroll in training, conduct personal research – do whatever you can to enhance your leadership skills and knowledge of the industry. Examine other business best practices and see which ones you can apply to your business.2. Lacking Uniqueness and Value.You may have a great product or service for which there is strong demand, but your business is still failing. It may be that your approach is mediocre or you lack a strong value proposition. If there’s strong demand, you probably have a lot of competitors and are failing to stand out in the crowd.How to Avoid Value Proposition Failure: What sets your business apart from competitors? How do you conduct business in a way that is totally unique? What are your competitors doing better than you are? Develop a customized approach or service package that no one else in your industry is using so you can present it as a strong value proposition that attracts attention and interest.This is how you build a brand. Your brand is the image your customers recognize and associate with your business. Your brand identity, including your logo, tagline, colors, and all the visible aesthetics and business philosophies that represent your company should be supported by your value proposition. It should separate you from the pack and present your individual perspective to your customers. Do everything you can to present that unique value proposition to your market so you can capture a market share and begin building your conversion rates.See Also: How to Create a Unique Value PropositionTo publicize your brand and set yourself apart, you will also need to step up your marketing plan and use as many venues as possible to present your brand to the public. You may be far better than your competitors but that won’t make any difference if your prospects don’t even know you’re in the game. Use social media, word of mouth, cold calling, direct mail, and other tried-and-true marketing techniques. Ensure you have a well-optimized online presence, develop lead generation and contact information capture techniques such as offering high-quality content on your site, a subscriber newsletter, and information giveaways.3. Not in Touch with Customer Needs.Your business will fail if you neglect to stay in touch with your customers and understand what they need and the feedback they offer. Your customers may like your product or service but, perhaps they would love it if you changed this feature or altered that procedure. What are they telling you? Have you been listening? Or is the market declining? Are they even still interested in what you’re selling? These are all important questions to ask and answer. Maybe you’re offering a product or service that is fallen well below trend.How to Avoid Losing Touch with Customers: A successful business keeps its eye on the trending values and interests of its existing and potential customers. Survey customers and find out what their interests are and keep abreast of changes and trends using customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Effective use of CRM can help keep your business from failing.4. Unprofitable Business Model.Akin to leadership failure is building a business on a model that is not sound, operating without a business plan, and pursuing a business for which there is no proven revenue stream. The business idea may be good but failure may come in the implementation of the idea if there are no strategic guidelines in place.How to Build a Good Business Model: Research and review the way other businesses in the industry operate. Develop a complete business plan that includes financial forecasting based on predictable revenue, strategic marketing, and challenge management solutions to overcome potential obstacles and competitor activities. Create a milestone chart with specific tasks and objectives assigned along the timeline so you can measure success, solve problems as they occur, and stay on track. A sound business model that incorporates best practices can help your business avoid failure.5. Poor Financial Management.Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends, a business news resource, offers this infographic which states that 40% of small businesses make a profit, 30% come out even, and the remaining 30% lose money.You must know, down to the last dime, where the money in your business is coming from and where it’s going in order for your business to succeed. Your business can also fail if you lack a contingency funding plan, a reserve of money you can call upon in the event of a financial crisis. Sometimes people start businesses with a dream of making money but don’t have the skill or interest to manage cash flow, taxes, expenses, and other financial issues. Poor accounting practice puts a business on a path straight to failure.How to Avoid Financial Mismanagement: Use professional business accounting software to keep records of all financial transactions, including every expenditure and all revenues received, and use this information to generate profit and loss statements. This is valuable information that you need to run your business, know where you stand at all times, and keep it operating in the black. If you lack skill in financial management, consider hiring a tax advisor and professional bookkeeper or certified public account to help manage your financial affairs.6. Rapid Growth and Over-expansion.Disney / via theguardian.comEvery now and then a business startup grows much faster than it can keep up with. You open a website with a trending product and suddenly you are inundated with orders you are not able to fill. Or perhaps the opposite is true. You are so convinced that your product is going to take the world by storm that you invest heavily and order way too much inventory and now you can’t move it. These are both additional paths to business failure.How to Avoid Growth and Expansion Problems. Business growth and expansion take as much careful and strategic planning as managing day-to-day operations. Even well-established and successful commercial franchises such as fast-food restaurants and convenience stores conduct careful research and planning before opening a new location. They measure local and regional demographics and spending trends, future development plans for the area, and other pertinent issues before they move forward. You must do the same for your business to avoid failure.Conduct thorough research to ensure the time is right and the funding is available for expansion. Make sure the initial business is stable before expanding to an additional location. Don’t order inventory you’re not sure you can sell but have a plan already in place to fill orders quickly should the demand present itself. The key to successful growth and expansion—and avoiding business failure—is strategic planning.If 50% of new businesses fail, then 50% of new businesses can succeed. Starting a business is an exciting endeavor that requires a clearly defined product or service and a strong market demand for it. Whether you desire to start a new business or you’re already running a business, you must understand that success depends on careful strategic planning and sound fiscal management that begin prior to startup and continue throughout the life of the business.