With the EU data protection regulations coming into play, a lot of businesses are re-looking at their Privacy and Cookie Policies. As they well should. It’s important to keep your website visitors up to date with the privacy and cookie policies in the clearest way you possibly can.
To give you some idea of what you should be telling your website visitors, we’ve selected the 5 best-worded cookie policies we’ve found. Use these as inspiration to improve your own!
First, what is a cookie policy?
For those who still think we’re talking about the chocolate-chip kind of cookies, we wish! We mean the cookies which are small text files that websites can put on a computer or mobile device to track who comes to the website. The cookie helps the website recognise when that device revisits the website.
Why do people freak out about cookies?
When you explain what a cookie does properly, most people accept the use of cookies. However, it’s when website visitors don’t understand cookies but are aware it affects their data privacy that they become concerned. That’s why a clear, simple message is so important.
Yes, cookies allow you to see what your website visitors look at on your website. Some websites allow their website visitors to turn cookie tracking off, while other visitors may abandon websites entirely if they insist on cookies. Either is acceptable, but the clearer you make your message the more likely web visitors are to accept your use of cookies.
Below are 5 of our favourite cookie policy messages.
Have you seen any others that are great examples of being transparent with your website traffic?
Apple: The no-nonsense message
Cookies enable you to use shopping carts and to personalize your experience on our sites, tell us which parts of our websites people have visited, help us measure the effectiveness of ads and web searches, and give us insights into user behavior so we can improve our communications and products.
Innocent: The fun message
A cookie is a small text file containing information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes and allows us to analyse our site traffic patterns. It does not contain chocolate chips, you cannot eat it and there is no special hidden jar.
Facebook: The friendly approach
To help personalise content, tailor and measure adverts and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking on or navigating the site, you agree to allow us to collect information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy.
BT: The soft opt-out cookie technique
The cookie settings on this website are set to ‘allow all cookies’ to give you the very best experience. If you continue without changing these settings, you consent to this – but if you want, you can change your settings at any time at the bottom of this page.
CookieCuttr: The short and sweet message
We use cookies, just to track visits to our website, we store no personal details.
So, what are you going to do about your cookie message?
