A new US-based study by Keynote Competitive Research, part of internet testing & monitoring group Keynote Systems, has found the most-frustrating mobile web experience for smartphone owners is web pages that are slow to load. Two-thirds of respondents cited this as a recent problem, with ‘website not optimised for smartphone’ named as the next most frustrating issue.

64% of smartphone owners wanted a website to load within four seconds (82% wanted loading within five seconds), while 60% of tablet users expected to wait less than three seconds for a web page.

The top five activities on smartphones were:

• accessing local information such as maps and event locations (88%),
• searching for general information (82%),
• participating in social media or social networking sites (76%),
• reading news and entertainment (75%),
• finding local services, like ATMs or stores (74%).

Tablet use presented a different top five:

• reading news and entertainment (79%),
• searching for general information (77%),
• watching videos (76%),
• accessing location information (75%),
• participating in social media or social networking sites (75%).