Do I need a cookie banner and a privacy policy?
If you have visitors from the United Kingdom or the European Union, you need a privacy notice, and you need consent before any tracking or advertising cookie is set, which is what the consent bar is for.
This is a plain summary of what we include at handover, not legal advice. For a specific case, ask a lawyer in that country.
What has to exist
- A privacy notice that says what you collect, why, how long you keep it and who else sees it.
- A consent bar that asks before setting analytics or advertising cookies, and that lets someone refuse as easily as accept.
- Terms for what you sell, including distance selling and cancellation rules where they apply.
- An Impressum in Germany. A missing one there is grounds for a formal warning, and those arrive from competitors, not from the state.
- Italy asks for its own privacy and cookie notices where you sell there.
What the consent bar actually has to do
A bar that only says "we use cookies" and has one button does not do the job. Consent has to be asked before the cookie is set, refusing has to be as easy as accepting, and the choice has to be storable and changeable later. If your advertising tracking fires before the choice, the data is both unlawful and unusable.
What it means for your ads
Conversion tracking depends on consent. That is not a reason to skip consent, it is a reason to set the two up together so the numbers you report are the numbers you are allowed to have.
What we include
Privacy notice, cookie consent and terms are part of the handover, not an extra. For the German market we add the Impressum, and for Italy its own notices. The texts are written for the site they belong to, and the consent bar is connected to the tracking rather than sitting next to it.
Related
Frequently asked questions
Do I need consent for a contact form?
A form you filled in yourself is not a cookie. You still need a privacy notice explaining what happens to what you sent.
Is a cookie bar enough on its own?
No. It has to actually block tracking until consent is given, and the privacy notice has to exist and match.
I only sell locally. Does this apply?
If visitors from the UK or the EU can reach your site and you track them, it applies to those visitors.
Tell us what you want built
You get a written scope with the price within one working day. Nothing is stored on our server: your details turn into a WhatsApp message and sending stays your choice.