Conservative website speed the worst among UK political parties

The website for the Conservative party has the worst page download speed among England's major political groups, according to recent research by major online monitor group Site Confidence.

The research group says that the Conservative party website takes an average of 24.78 seconds to load. This is relatively slower than both the Labour party website and that of the Liberal Democrats, says Site Confidence.

Tests run by the research group show that the Labour Party website took an average 12.06 seconds to load, while the Liberal Democrats site was significantly faster at 6.24 seconds on average.

Bob Dowson, director at Site Confidence, says that the Conservative website needs improvement, but all party websites should try to better when so many voters are looking for information.

"An average download speed of in excess of 20 seconds, as recorded for the Conservatives site in March, is very poor", says Dowson. "However, running up to the general election, when there is a much greater need for the public to be able to access policy information, parties should aim for even quicker response times".

The report comes as Google says it is considering website speeds. The search engine giant announced recently that website connection speed will factor into its ranking of results.