Rackspace Managed Hosting and the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) released a new report revealing the five key design and Web hosting flaws leading to stress, anger and the newly coined "Mouse Rage Syndrome" (MRS)

December 14, 2006 – (TopHosts News Brief) – A new report – published by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) and commissioned by Rackspace Managed Hosting – has uncovered five key IT flaws in the way websites are designed and hosted that may lead to harmful health effects.

SIRC combined data from a YouGov poll of 2,500 people with physiological tests on a separate sample of internet users. The participants were asked to find information from a number of different websites, while the tests measured the physical and physiological reactions to website experiences. Brainwaves, heart-rate fluctuations, muscle tension and skin conductivity were the measurements.

The results revealed badly designed and hosted websites can cause stress and anger, leading to the term “Mouse Rage Syndrome” or MRS, a new physiological term being coined.

The Top 5 website failures that lead to Mouse Rage:
- Slow to load pages
- Confusing / difficult to navigate layouts
- Excessive pop-ups
- Unnecessary advertising
- Site unavailability

The first signs of Mouse Rage:
- Heart rate quickens
- Increased sweating
- Furious clicking of the mouse
- Simultaneous clicking and cursing the screen
- Bashing the mouse

“We believe that businesses that are selling online have a duty to their customers to ensure that the experience is as stress free as possible,” Jacques Greyling, managing director of Rackspace Managed Hosting, said in a PR Newswire release. “The public has shown that it wants to buy online, as it has been forecast that over GBP4m(2) an hour will be spent in the UK in the run up to Christmas. The message is clear, businesses need to provide simple and easy to navigate layouts, whilst focusing on speed and uptime.”

For more visit http://www.sirc.org, or visit http://www.rackspace.co.uk.