Cookie banner

[govuk-design-system]

What

Help users manage their personal data by telling them when you store cookies on their device.

[joelanman]

This may well change with GDPR coming in - looking at GDPR patterns in general might be a better approach

[timpaul]

There's also a need to tell users about updates to privacy policies and similar, for example:

[ermlikeyeah]

Also: (how) is this different from the cookies link in the footer?

[edwardhorsford]

I'm going to add this to my service. One question: should it say 'GOV.UK uses...' or 'Service name uses...' - I reckon the latter. It's the service setting the cookies, and the service's cookie policy you'll get to when you visit the link.

[chao-xian]

Just to note that a version of this was added to govuk_publishing_components.

[MalcolmVonMoJ]

In Check if you can get Legal Aid, we were using an older pattern until recently.

We have now changed to this pattern as an interim whilst research is ongoing, so it might not be our final decision.

Our reasoning for choosing this was:

• We wanted something that was visibly different from the main GOV.UK cookie banner, so users would recognise that this is not the one they might've just accepted/rejected.
• We wanted something that was more obvious than the then-current banner, so users would be less inclined to just use the service without ignoring it.
• Counter to that, we also didn't want to be too intrusive.
• We didn't want a simple yes/no option as we have mandatory cookies for Welsh language and so to say no was misleading and to say accept all and accept mandatory is starting to get a tad wordy.

So, we kept the current choices (yes/settings) and only amended the look and feel of the banner for the now. Our brilliant user researcher and exquisite content designer have not put this to bed yet and are continuing to look at all the above points.

However, the moment we made this change (March 6th, 2 weeks ago today), we noticed a significant increase in users accepting cookies. Approximately double. This still only puts us at 40% of pre-GDPR levels in round figures.

Google Analytics details: