Given that the EU cookie law has been implemented in the UK for nearly 18 months, we were curious about what the real impact has been; we mean aside from exposure to general cookie law related frustration, an abundance of crumbling cookie puns and a whole host of coding issues.
When the cookie law was introduced back in 2011, website owners were given a year to comply. Recognising that the law wasn't going to change and that owners must conform, we rallied behind the cause, ensuring that both old sites and new sites built had this feature enabled.
Bearing in mind the sheer volume of work it took to implement on our own website, plus the months of work to ensure our client’s sites were compliant with the legislation, the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of visitors to our site ignored the requests for permission to use cookies altogether; or so data from Google Analytics on our website demonstrates.
| Cookie Permission | Number of Visits |
| Cookies Disabled | 18 |
| Opted in | 53 |
| Ignored the Question | 10,187 |
Of the 10,000 plus page views to our website between 26th May and 17th September, we had 18 requests for cookies to be disabled, 53 visitors that opted in and 10,187 that ignored the question. Meaning? Well, for over 99% of visitors to our website, the request for permission to enable or disable cookies was ignored.
Now, given we're an upbeat bunch here at Conscious, we do always try to look on the bright side. So what is the silver lining? What bonuses have come out of the EU cookie legislation? I would say there are three main things: one, it’s made us all more aware of issues of privacy on the web; aware, but still fairly disinterested. Two, it’s a safe assumption that our production team could now code a tab (otherwise known as, The Slidey Thing) with their eyes shut. And three, it brought this rather comical website into our lives.