Are You Getting Your Cookie Consent Banner Right?

Yet, many users clicking accept are not really sure what they’re accepting.

A large majority of websites will display banners (although some are still not showing any!) which simply ask that the user ‘accept’ that there are cookies tracking them.

Is This Approach Not Compliant?

It’s not that the approach is not compliant, we actually ran with this approach when GDPR first came into play. We had confirmation from those working in legal and GDPR that displaying the banner that linked to a GDPR compliant cookie and privacy policy met the requirements.

So, if your website has this, it may still tick the box. However, GDPR came into play in May 2018; 5 years ago.

Much has happened in this time. Technology, advances in tracking, and tools which can control what’s tracked have been introduced. So, much like your trusty mobile that was the best thing since sliced bread a month ago, a new model will be soon be introduced that puts your phone to shame.

Although there hasn’t been much movement or promotion of compliance changes, what we have noticed as a WordPress Agency is that we are seeing and implementing more and more alternate cookie consent banners, and here’s why.

Cookie Consent Version 1

The first versions of these banners were simple notification style banners that displayed a message on page load. These allowed the user to easily accept to dismiss them, whilst also directing the user to read the privacy policy if they wished to.

There wasn’t really a reject option. To reject you just had to leave the website.

The user had no real choice.

Cookie Consent Version 2

The next iteration provided the user with choice. Which is kind of why they were introduced in the first place.

Ultimately, the banner still displays 2 options. However, the secondary link option doesn’t just direct to the privacy or cookie policy, but opens a selection menu where the user can control which cookies they wish to turn on or off. Choosing which apps and tools can track them.

Cookie Consent Tools and Plugins

There are now many tools for cookie management available for WordPress. However, there are a handful that we see crop up time and time again, so we’ll list these ones below.

Cookie Control By Civic (we tend to use this ourselves a lot when building websites.)

One Trust

CookieYes

CookieBot by Usercentrics

Be Aware They Won’t Work Out Of The Box

These tools that provide the control for users to turn off cookies look easy to setup right?

Whilst fairly straightforward, these tools do require a little extra work to get them working as they should.

In fact we have audited websites that have banners on that are showing all the signs that the cookies can be turned off etc, yet nothing actually happens when the user switches cookies on or off. They are still being tracked regardless.

That is because the business or their development agency have failed to setup the cookie tracking correctly. The plugin will not magically make this happen for you and it takes time to implement correctly. So if you’re implementing this into your website, you will need to allocate time and budget for this to be executed correctly.

So just be aware that it’s not as simple as installing a plugin.

Bonus Tip To Keep Tracking More Users

Giving users control over the cookies that track their activity is a good thing, but from a business’ data perspective it can be disheartening, as your data quickly shrinks and your boss probably won’t understand why, even if you explain it to them.

A few things we noticed were:

1. Don’t display or use an option that says ‘reject’ cookies on the initial pop up. Yes, undoubtedly this is a tool for a user, but if you make too easy for them, they’ll choose the easy option every time.
2. Avoid having an easy option that says ‘only necessary cookies’. As again the user will select the one that causes the least amount of pain. Introduce an ”Accept Standard Settings’. This can have the cookies pre-set and with the button being large, it is the easiest one for users to see, they are more likely to choose it, as they want to get it out of their way.
3. For those users who want to control the cookies, we still need to provide the options bar. Use the secondary link to display ‘Cookie Preferences’ and open the selection window. By default Necessary Cookies will be a requirement but in this window the user can choose which other cookies to turn on or off. Remember that necessary cookies are only those required to ensure your site functions, they won’t include analytics or advertising cookies. When only necessary cookies is selected, all other cookies are immediately set to off.

So What’s To Swipe & Deploy?

So the key takeaways today are that:

1. If you still haven’t got a consent banner on your website, you need to get one!
2. If you have a version 1 of the banner, begin investigating the cost to implement version 2.
3. If you have a version 2 but it’s not correctly setup allowing users to actually turn cookies off, then get them to change it.
4. Finally, if you have everything in version 2 setup correctly but are not tracking as many people as you wish, look at changing the wording or follow the tips mentioned above.

That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy #42. Join me next week when I’ll share another insight or piece of inspiration from around the web.