Regulation requires you to become a pastry chef 🧑🍳 and in principle you agree. But until now, for you a cookie is something you eat and it's been 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 deal out of it!
A cookie 🍪 in a few ingredients
Cookies are small text files that enable the activation of certain features on your website (social media share buttons, online chat module, visitor journey tracking on the site, etc.).
These small data files contain a unique identifier and are sent and stored on the terminal of the user visiting your site (their phone, computer, tablet and others).
And every opportunity is a good excuse to eat cookies 😋. Whether it's to:
Remember your identifier
Set the site's display language for the visitor
Remember your current shopping cart on an e-commerce site
Open a chat window
Etc…
There's never a wrong time to eat them! And to never get tired of them, cookies have been developed in different varieties that we'll list right away 👇.
Cookies for every taste 🌈
For every occasion 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 features 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, whereas first-party cookies come directly from the site. In any case, they serve to track visitors for marketing purposes (online behavior study, chat launch, unvalidated shopping cart, etc…)
Statistics & 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 and for marketing purposes, we categorize them under social media given the importance they have taken in the cookie landscape. Often called "Pixels", they serve for retargeting for advertising and for affiliation.
Some occasions require permission 👌
Whether they are "third-party" or "first-party" cookies, remember that all cookies that are not strictly necessary for the site's functioning or 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 can be eaten without hesitation and are permitted for all 😋.
📌 If you wish to identify which cookies are placed on your site, here's the recipe!