It is also effective for enterprise intranets. Robinson says the cost saving for one of Aptimize's large US accounts is $11,000 a month. There are 2500 employees, each viewing eight pages a day on the intranet. By reducing the load time of each page by four seconds, 22 hours of time per day are saved.

Web Accelerator is licensed per website. A typical sale is between $20,000 and $50,000.

With 97 percent of revenue generated from exports, Robinson spends a lot of time travelling the world. He is well connected in the US, having spent six years there with Microsoft, initially as a programme manager with the first version of Visual Studio, then latterly working on SharePoint, which figures prominently on Aptimize's web site.

Citrix has signed a partnership agreement with Aptimize as an international distributor, though Robinson says sales are still predominantly over the web.

The company also recently signed another partnership agreement with Compuware, which specialises in performance management and improvement.