Figures released last month have once again highlighted rapid growth in the UK e-commerce market. But some experts have cautioned that many companies are still failing to fully exploit the moneymaking potential of e-trade because their web sites are not designed to withstand heavy usage and customer service levels are below par.

According to research from the Office for National Statistics, the value of goods and services sold online by UK firms rose to £130.4bn in 2006, an increase of 29 per cent on the 2005 figure of £101bn.

Despite this impressive growth, unresponsive sites are still a major issue, according to consultancy Accenture. In many cases, problems occur because online retailers build new functionality into their sites in response to commercial pressures without first undertaking the necessary performance testing and capacity planning, argued Scott Gilliland of Accenture.

New research from the consultancy suggests that companies that invest in performance planning and testing spend just five per cent of their budget on fixing problems, while those firms that neglect these tasks spend 16 per cent of their budget on fixing problems.

“We see the pressure of time or finance is forcing companies to cut corners,” said Gilliland. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding in terms of what customers will do if the site is not performing ­ firms don’t understand what will happen if customers run into a 10-second response time.”

Phil Turnbull of web hosting firm Hostway argued that a poorly performing site can affect the bottom line and damage customer loyalty, which is potentially much more serious. “[Ensuring efficient performance] can be a huge undertaking, especially for companies that have a very wide range of offerings and a large customer base,” he added. “But the [web site infrastructure] is only one part of the jigsaw ­ if you’re not able to fulfill orders once they’re taken, this could have a worse effect on brand loyalty.”

Fabio Torlini of managed hosting provider Rackspace said the company advises its customers to start preparing for the Christmas period as early as October.

“Planning is the key to handling any spike in trading, especially because new and complex Web 2.0 applications are putting additional pressures on existing infrastructures,” Torlini said. “Couple this with operating systems becoming heavier and databases built to run increasingly complicated queries to support an interactive user experience; it’s essential for a scaleable infrastructure to be ready to cope on demand with a surge in web activity.”