The UK government's flagship information website was taken offline yesterday after suffering "technical difficulties". 

"We are currently experiencing technical difficulties on the Directgov website but expect normal service to be restored very shortly," a message on the website read. "Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused and try again later."

A spokeswoman for Directgov insisted that the site was not taken down for an official reason and was back up later in the day.

"If that was the case then I can only assume it was for a very short period because it is working fine at the moment," she said.

Stephen Davis, managing director of load testing consultancy StarBase, warned that a crashed website is "toxic to any business". 

"Thursday's failure of a key government services portal goes to illustrate that, regardless of size or IT budget, no organisation is immune to catastrophic system downtime," he said.

Davis explained that too many websites deliver an unreliable service because of a lack of stable functionality or performance.

"Once confidence in a site is lost, frustrated users probably won't give you a second chance," he said.

Davis added that too many businesses treat testing as an afterthought, when it is necessary throughout the project life cycle and while the service is live. "Without this, your brand image and business are at risk," he said.