The cookieless future has been a long time coming – and it’s not quite here yet! Google has recently announced that they have pushed off the date of third-party cookie deprecation to the second half of 2024, which means that your e-commerce business has more time to prepare. If you haven’t already switched to Google Analytics 4 and put your tracking and reporting plans in place, this is the time to do it. And it’s never too early to start building loyalty among your customer base, to refresh your SEO, or to think about how to use your social media channels as you move away from cookies.
But if your business has already taken action on these big picture concerns, you can use this extra time to dig into more granular e-commerce website optimization. User and customer experience is critical to converting and retaining customers. The easier it is for your customer to navigate your site to find (and purchase) what they’re looking for, the more likely it is they’ll return to do so again and again and become one of your high-value customers. That means you should always think about what adjustments you can make to ensure your website is user-friendly.
As privacy regulations have increased and consumer expectations around privacy online have shifted, e-commerce sites have added privacy notification pop-ups and banners to allow customers to understand what first-party data is being tracked. From there, customers can opt to accept or reject the use of certain cookies. A smart design for these notifications can help ensure that customers stay on your page and allow you to access their data, while a poor design might see customers closing your site before they’ve even started to browse.
Web Development for Privacy Notification UX
Ever since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was put in place in May 2018, it’s become a regular occurrence to see a privacy notification pop up when you first visit a website. Some are unobtrusive, while others won’t allow you to view the site until you’ve reviewed and accepted or rejected the terms. How these cookie notices look, and what options they present, can be informed by the type of site they’re gracing and what kind of information that site needs to track. Understanding what a business needs from its cookies is key to making decisions about the design of privacy notifications.
Some sites have little need to track their users and only require essential cookies, while other sites might need what could be called non-essential cookies to even function. These “non-essential” cookies may be connected to certain plugins that have been used to build or modify the site. Other sites may want to encourage users to allow “non-essential” tracking because the data collected can have a big impact on the business’s success with customers as well on the customer’s experience. Whether you are refreshing an existing website or building a new one, making sure your website is user-friendly — right down to the privacy notification that greets new customers — is critical as we move toward the cookieless future.
Best Practices for Cookie Consent Notice Design
While your privacy notification has to meet the needs of your e-commerce business, here are a few high-level principals to keep in mind:
- Aesthetics: Your privacy notification should be unobtrusive, streamlined, and easy to read.
- Prioritization: Prioritize the essential cookies your business needs and the data it needs to collect to make your business a success, and keep the non-essential cookies to a minimum.
- Functionality: Make it easy for your customers to review, accept, or reject your terms as needed, in as few steps as possible.
- Clarity: Build trust with your customers by providing clear information on what data is being tracked and how it will be used, while still keeping the notification as streamlined as possible.
How NetElixir can help
At NetElixir, we live by the motto, “Say No To Average”, and that’s especially true when it comes to web development. Your web presence is where your customer interacts with your business, and no detail is too small and no challenge too big for our team at NetElixir. Our web development experts can work with you to build a new e-commerce site from the ground up that is ready for the cookieless future, or we can help you ensure your current site is up-to-date and ready to go by the time deprecation is complete. We have over 18 years of experience creating sites that are tailored to customers’ needs, and we will work with you every step of the way. Learn about our web development services today and contact NetElixir today to learn more!
