Back in 2002, the European Union first began to regulate the placing & storage of cookies on site visitors’ computers. Since then, we’ve seen numerous changes, new laws, revisions of said laws, and updated official advice. Many of these changes have resulted in a net win, of course — for privacy, for consumer rights, and so on. There have, of course, been a few unintended consequences, and one might make the argument that the proliferation of intrusive, complicated, and sometimes unnecessary cookie consent banners has made the internet overall a significantly more infuriating experience than it strictly needs to be. 

What’s not up for debate, is the fact that a whole lot of site managers are really confused about the whole situation. Within our own sphere of digital marketing, we see a lot of the fallout from this — sometimes on a daily basis. Suspiciously high engagement, unlikely numbers for direct traffic, sessions tracking page views one-for-one, doubled (or halved) numbers… the list goes on. 

The good news is that there are ways to get this right, and they don’t need to be all that complicated. The first step is choosing a reliable cookie management platform. There are plenty out there, and many are good, but here’s a list of some of the most commonly recommended:

1. Cookiefirst:  Our usual recommendation: popular, reliable, very easy to use and affordable at the same time.

2. CookieBot: A close second place that we have no issues to recommend as well.

3. OneTrust: Another big player in this space, OneTrust is designed for the most seamless integration possible, though is a bit more expensive.

4. ConsentManager: Customizable, yet easy-to-use cookie management for all regions.

5. CookieYes: CookieYes is a popular option, particularly among WordPress users. The company claims 22% of the total market share for their solution. Note that it’s not as customizable as some other options.

6. Iubenda: While the company’s compliance offerings go well beyond cookies, Iubenda is well liked by users for its comprehensive features. 

Pick a good provider and make sure you implement their banner properly, and you’ll be fine — right? Well, there are a few further pitfalls to be aware of. Let’s take a look at a few of them below.

Falling foul of the rules

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Depending on where you’re operating, this may change somewhat, but taking the EU guidelines as an example, there are plenty of innocuous-seeming ways to break the law. Pre-checking boxes? Restricting access until users accept your cookies? Hiding relevant information (or the whole banner)? Straight to jail. 

Okay, not quite — but the rules are strict and spelled out clearly, so making sure you’re compliant is potentially a quick win and a way to avoid a lot of hassle further down the line.

Treating everything as “strictly necessary”

This one is technically part of the above. You’re required to give users a suitably granular list of options to choose from. You can, for example, group several different cookies under one check-box (e.g. “Advertising”) but you must allow users to choose to accept or reject different kinds of cookies separately. 

Claiming that everything is strictly necessary for your site’s function may seem like a sneaky way to ensure everything is checked, but you may find that this sort of tactic actually results in everything being rejected instead. 

Broken connections to Google Tag Manager

This may seem obvious, but we’ve seen it plenty of times: you’ve read the rules, crossed the Ts, dotted the Is… all the boxes are checked (but not pre-checked, of course). Your banner is perfect. 

And then… nothing. Not until a user visits another page, in any case. Your tags weren’t firing properly. Incidentally, this is a classic source of those suspiciously-high-direct-traffic pages we mentioned earlier.

It’s only an easy fix, if you know it’s happening. 

Banners that refresh the page

While they might seem like a solution to the previous issue, banners that force a page refresh can actually lead to a similar problem. Yes, a tag will fire if a user consents and refreshes, but they’re now landing back on your site, having been referred from… your site. If you want any data at all on your traffic sources — and you very much do — these banners are best avoided. 

Hopefully the list above will help you steer clear of any major cookie catastrophes, but there are, unfortunately, some issues that simply can’t be avoided. A correct implementation of a cookie consent banner is going to create a drop off in your data — always. 

That said, there are things we can do to mitigate the effect, but that’s a topic for another blog post.