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By Graham Hayday, 25 October 2002 15:30

NEWS The UK's leading high street banks are making some basic errors when it comes to providing services over the internet, according to a survey out today. The findings, based on a one-month study into the performance of the top 22 banking sites in the UK, showed that just 14 per cent of the leading banking sites were available for the whole month. They exhibited the worst availability, page size and download times when compared to other financial organisations included in the study, which was conducted by Parallel Ltd, a UK-based network and internet management company. The findings showed high street banks' sites were unavailable for twice as long as those of building societies or internet banks. The average time that sites were unavailable was 108 minutes per month, equating to 21 hours per year. Download time was another major issue. Only 15 per cent of the leading retail banks surveyed had a homepage that would download in eight seconds or less - the recommended maximum time to ensure a good customer experience, according to Parallel. On average, home users had to wait more than 18 seconds for the homepage to download, with one in ten waiting more than 30 seconds. Page size was also a major problem for online customers, with 75 per cent of banking sites containing web pages that exceed the recommended 40kb limit. The largest page size recorded was 106kb. Tim Moore, director of Parallel, said in a statement: "With most internet banking customers still connecting via a dial-up modem, it is vital that banks start to reduce the size of their homepages. Availability is crucial as more and more customers rely on the internet as the main channel of communication with their banks. The leading banks have a responsibility to provide the best service available which simply isn't happening at the moment."