The British have a reputation for patience, politely queuing for hours for the latest Playstation or the Kate Moss collection at Top Shop. But this patience does not extend to online activities, according to the results of a new survey.

According to results published by GBC on behalf of client PacketExchange, 70 per cent of British surfers would give a site less than 10 seconds to load before starting to search for an alternative, behaviour that is not mirrored offline:

In contrast to the virtual world, the nation of queuers were more than happy to wait up to 15 minutes in a nightclub or post office queue. Slow web pages weren't the only pet peeve of the internet shopper, with poor web design (50.4 per cent) and crashing websites (52 per cent) [cited] as other annoying traits of their online experience.

Survey respondents didn't just give up at the browsing stage. More than 70 per cent said that they had given up on a purchase at the checkout due to slow-loading pages. The results suggest that efficient service has more impact than brand or content when it comes to actually completing a sale online.

"IMRG recently estimated that shoppers will spend £78 billion a year online by 2010; however it is important online retailers remember the lessons from their high-street counterparts. There is very little brand loyalty online, and sites are judged not just for content, but speed and quality of service as well", said Kieron O'Brien, CEO, PacketExchange. "This is also true for social networking sites and other online traders, who are trading in content rather than physical goods, relying on online ad revenues as their source of income. If companies don't deliver the service people are expecting, they will take their money and subscriptions to their competitors."

Hopes for future improvements in the Internet are also linked to speed. While 54 per cent said they wanted a safer online experience, 63 per cent said that they were looking for a faster net.

The results should fit PacketExchange's plans quite neatly. The company offers a private alternative to the Internet, designed for use by high-volume sites. By circumventing many of the packet hops and bottlenecks on the public internet, the company claims to be able to deliver a faster and richer experience to users. The service is currently used by social networking site Bebo, which is based in the US despite a large majority of its users being in Europe, with over 8mn in the UK alone.