Regulations require you to become a pastry chef 🧑🍳 you are presumably on board. But until now, for you a cookie is something you eat and it's remained complicated to get them on your website 🤯 ?
Don't panic! We're here to explain the basics to you, and you'll see…no need to make a big crumble out of it!
A cookie 🍪 in a few ingredients
Cookies are small text files that enable the activation of certain functionalities on your website (social media sharing buttons, online chat module, visitor journey tracking on the site, etc.).
These small data files contain a unique identifier and are sent and stored in the terminal of the user visiting your site (their phone, their computer, their tablet and others).
And every opportunity is a good excuse to eat cookies 😋. Whether it's for:
Remembering your identifier
Setting the site's display language for the visitor
Remembering your current shopping cart on an e-commerce site
Launching a chat window
Etc…
There's no time limit for eating them! And to never get tired of them, cookies have been declined in different specialties that we'll list right away 👇.
Cookies for all tastes 🌈
Every occasion has its special cookie:
Functional cookies: strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the site, they are exempt from consent. Without them, it's impossible to display the site's functionalities correctly.
Advertising or marketing cookies: We can distinguish "third-party" cookies and "first-party" cookies. Third-party cookies come from domains other than the one the user is visiting, while first-party cookies come directly from the site. In any case, they consist of tracking visitors for marketing purposes (online behavior analysis, chat launch, unvalidated shopping cart, etc…)
Statistics and audience cookies: Halfway between functional and marketing, they serve to improve the site and user experience. But since they are not strictly necessary for the site to function, they are still subject to consent.
Social media cookies: Considered as third-party cookies for marketing purposes, we categorize them under social media given the importance they have taken in the cookies landscape. Often called "Pixels", they are used for retargeting for advertising and affiliation.
Some occasions require permission 👌
Whether they are "third-party" or "first-party" cookies, it's important to remember that all those that are not strictly necessary for the site to function or for the service requested by the visitor require consent: behavior tracking, advertising campaigns, marketing operations… And this applies regardless of the nature of the information placed or read on the visitor's device — a tracker does not need to collect personal data to be subject to consent.
As for functional cookies ensuring the proper functioning of the site, they are eaten without hesitation and are permitted for everyone 😋.
📌 If you want to identify which cookies are placed on your site, here's the recipe!