Following on from yesterday’s account we come to the mid-part of Friday.

After Robert Puddy’s “speech” the speakers and one guest took part in a very useful feature which is a trademark of the Focus 4 the Future seminars – the “hot seat“.

The hot seat is a great idea and a very useful experience for all attendees.

The basic idea is that one member of the audience volunteers to have their site put up on the screen at the front of the room and then the expert speakers “rip it apart”.

They go through the site and point out all potential problems – from likely visitor leaks to useless links and features. It’s brutal but fascinating – a superb source of ideas for everyone, no one’s site is perfect afterall.

Of course, once they have ripped the site apart they help the owner to repair the “damage”. He gets a thorough make-over to assist him in optimising the site for its primary purpose.

What I found was that I was making a lot of the same mistakes as many of the volunteers – so soon after the seminar I fixed the leaks.

Results?

Well, my subscriber rate is now around 50% where it used to be around 28% so I certainly got my money’s worth 🙂

The victim for the first hot seat was David, the owner of:

http://www.TheNettle.com/index.php.

I’m sure he won’t mind me outing him as a volunteer for the hot seat – soon after the seminar I signed up for his subscription-only member’s site and newsletter. Although he hasn’t made the changes suggested by the seminar speakers yet, I do know that he has almost finished the new look to his site, which will be implemented soon.

You can get a free trial of The Nettle by going to:

http://www.TheNettle.com/freetrial.php

Next time – Friday’s afternoon session with Martin Avis…