Websites must ensure they are able to deal with internet traffic "spikes", where a surge of users access their website at any one time, it has been stated.

Ben Camm-Jones, the news editor at Web-User Magazine, said that despite very few websites seeing consistent levels of traffic, many of them may expect to see huge peaks in interest every so often and as such, they should invest in a higher server capacity to deal with demand.

He said that if this is not done, the general public had the propensity to be fickle enough to look for other websites to get their fix for products, services or information.

Mr Camm-Jones concluded: "If you have a lot of rich content on your site, perhaps offering a low-graphics version - similar to what the BBC does - could help when traffic is high."

According to Hitwise, the category areas which have seen the biggest increase in online traffic are weather, news, entertainment and travel.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).