No cookie banner required
Cookies are for eating, not spying.
I’m not sure I know anyone who likes cookie banners. In a very unscientific Twitter poll I asked if people thought cookie banners were “good eggs” or “pesky blighters.” 100% voted for the latter.
I agree. I find them annoying and they distract me from doing what I want to do.
As a result this website has disabled all non-essential cookies (although we do have one essential cookie appropriately called crumb*).
This means we have no cookies that can personally identify your IP address and chase you round the internet to sell stuff back at you.
No Google Analytics tracking your every move
No social media share buttons tracking your preferences.
No advertising pixels tracking your every click.
When we say we respect your privacy, we mean it. You are not being tracked.
A cookie banner free website is within your reach.
Website analytics
Instead of Google Analytics, we use Fathom Analytics.
Fathom doesn’t collect personal data and so it doesn't need to use cookies. It provides headline website analytics. Enough for you to make quick decisions so you can get back to what you do best - running your business.
We pay for Fathom because we think respecting individual privacy is worth it. Google Analytics is free because they collect reams of our personal data with which they sell more than enough advertising to compensate.
Social media share buttons
You know those colourful buttons winking at you? Encouraging you to share stuff to social media? The ones that slow your page down, presumptuously write the social media post for you and share your private data? Do you really need them?
If you do social media right, you know your followers because you are regularly engaging with them. You know which content is interesting and your followers will love it enough to share without the need of a share button.
Besides most web browsers have the ability to quickly share posts anyway.
Pay per click advertising
Brighter Side's marketing consists of word of mouth, tweeting, blogging, a search engine optimised website, involvement in the local community and (pandemic permitting) networking.
This provides enough work without the need for pay per click advertising. If the above marketing is enough for your business, then you don't need advertising cookies.
Yes to the above? Then you too can improve your website experience.
A cookie banner free website isn't for everyone:
If your website has log-in and / or checkout functionality.
Then you will need cookies to function and help give your customers a better experience by remembering their details.
If you act upon the data you collect.
Google Analytics has a wealth of useful and detailed information. If you regularly look beyond the headlines in your Google Analytics reports, you dig deep into the data and you act upon it; then you will need analytics cookies to track the individual actions of your website visitors.
If your business depends on social media or pay per click advertising.
If social media is an integral part of your marketing and you cross-share between platforms; if you regularly advertise on Google, Facebook, Instagram or Amazon - for best results you will need to install pixels and tags to analyse which ads work best.
Some useful resources
What are cookies?
Here is the Information Commission’s definition:
“A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is downloaded on to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies are used by many websites and can do a number of things, eg remembering your preferences, recording what you have put in your shopping basket, and counting the number of people looking at a website.”
Why do you need a cookie banner?
A good summary from CookieYes on why most websites need cookie banners.
Check what cookies are on your website.
Here is a free tool which tells you the cookies you have enabled on your website.
Our necessary cookie.
*The one (necessary) cookie we do have is the crumb cookie. This one is in all of our interests. It is used to prevent cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
Get rid of your pesky cookie banner
Would you like to get rid of your cookie banner? Send us an email, phone us on 01225 867909, or fill in the form below and we will see if we can help.
