Ann Summers can't keep it up for Valentine's shoppers

BMC Software tested nine sites which sell 'romantic' goods using its SiteAngel software, monitoring their performance, downtime and transactional availability. They were Amazon, Ann Summers, Debenhams, Harrods, Interflora, John Lewis, Lastminute, Next and Thorntons.

The best performer in terms of customer satisfaction was Harrods, which met the thresholds set by BMC 75 per cent of the time. The worst was Ann Summers, whose response time was double the acceptable limit.

But most failed BMC's end user satisfaction criteria. Typical problems were slow downloads, or the wrong web page being returned on request.

Amazon, Lastminute and Next all experienced downtime during the test period, with Amazon and Next each taking approximately 10 hours to fix a problem on one occasion.

Overall, the sites showed 95 per cent front-page availability.

The sites were checked every 15 minutes for a week, from 1 to 8 February.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for love this Valentine's Day, dating agency Udate.com claimed it's the fastest online matchmaking service in the world this week. It runs on 26 four-way Compaq servers running Windows 2000 and maintains a single global SQL2000 database.

According to another seasonal survey, 30 per cent of UK surfers would use a personal ad to find a date as it "saves time". The research was conducted by Loot's online division, which also revealed that 26 per cent of people in relationships aren't happy with their lot and are actively looking for fulfillment outside their present situation.

Ten per cent of the married respondents said that they are "seeking an experience different from their normal sexual preference". Of the total in this category, 28 per cent of women are keen to try out a gay experience.

It isn't clear whether this reveals the personal tastes of the UK population as a whole, or just those who use the web to visit Loot's site.