But if your business has already taken action on these big picture concerns, you can use this extra time to dig into more granular e-commerce website optimization. User and customer experience is critical to converting and retaining customers. The easier it is for your customer to navigate your site to find (and purchase) what they’re looking for, the more likely it is they’ll return to do so again and again and become one of your high-value customers. That means you should always think about what adjustments you can make to ensure your website is user-friendly.

As privacy regulations have increased and consumer expectations around privacy online have shifted, e-commerce sites have added privacy notification pop-ups and banners to allow customers to understand what first-party data is being tracked. From there, customers can opt to accept or reject the use of certain cookies. A smart design for these notifications can help ensure that customers stay on your page and allow you to access their data, while a poor design might see customers closing your site before they’ve even started to browse.

Web Development for Privacy Notification UX

Ever since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was put in place in May 2018, it’s become a regular occurrence to see a privacy notification pop up when you first visit a website. Some are unobtrusive, while others won’t allow you to view the site until you’ve reviewed and accepted or rejected the terms. How these cookie notices look, and what options they present, can be informed by the type of site they’re gracing and what kind of information that site needs to track. Understanding what a business needs from its cookies is key to making decisions about the design of privacy notifications.

Some sites have little need to track their users and only require essential cookies, while other sites might need what could be called non-essential cookies to even function. These “non-essential” cookies may be connected to certain plugins that have been used to build or modify the site. Other sites may want to encourage users to allow “non-essential” tracking because the data collected can have a big impact on the business’s success with customers as well on the customer’s experience. Whether you are refreshing an existing website or building a new one, making sure your website is user-friendly — right down to the privacy notification that greets new customers — is critical as we move toward the cookieless future. 

Best Practices for Cookie Consent Notice Design

While your privacy notification has to meet the needs of your e-commerce business, here are a few high-level principals to keep in mind:

• Aesthetics: Your privacy notification should be unobtrusive, streamlined, and easy to read.
• Prioritization: Prioritize the essential cookies your business needs and the data it needs to collect to make your business a success, and keep the non-essential cookies to a minimum.
• Functionality: Make it easy for your customers to review, accept, or reject your terms as needed, in as few steps as possible.
• Clarity: Build trust with your customers by providing clear information on what data is being tracked and how it will be used, while still keeping the notification as streamlined as possible.

How NetElixir can help

At NetElixir, we live by the motto, “Say No To Average”, and that’s especially true when it comes to web development. Your web presence is where your customer interacts with your business, and no detail is too small and no challenge too big for our team at NetElixir. Our web development experts can work with you to build a new e-commerce site from the ground up that is ready for the cookieless future, or we can help you ensure your current site is up-to-date and ready to go by the time deprecation is complete. We have over 18 years of experience creating sites that are tailored to customers’ needs, and we will work with you every step of the way. Learn about our web development services today and contact NetElixir today to learn more!

Additional Resources

• How to Optimize Your Website With The Latest Digital Marketing Trends
• Smart Cookies: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence
• Christmas in May: Your Holiday Strategy in the Cookieless World

The post Web Development For the Cookieless Future appeared first on NetElixir.

As marketers, we have to balance consumer privacy expectations with satisfying the needs of the brands we help. That means understanding what privacy means to consumers and what it takes to comply with privacy regulations so we can help brands meet those needs and expectations. But it also means doing what marketers do best – and what both businesses and consumers expect from us: getting the right brands in front of the right potential customers with the right message.

How Can Marketers and Brands Meet Consumers’ Online Privacy Expectations?

While some consumers understand that cookies and other data tracking can make their online shopping experience smoother and more relevant, they now expect to browse and make purchases online with more control over their data and more transparency over how it is used. Apple, Google, Firefox, and other companies are giving consumers more control over what data is shared, and well as how, when, and if it may be used. Marketers and brands would do well to follow their lead with their own data collection – and they need to be transparent with consumers about that data collection. Meeting these consumer expectations is one key step to building trust with potential customers. 

Marketers and businesses have to ensure their data collection practices meet regulations and laws, and we can continue to earn customer goodwill by going above and beyond to find new ways to deliver on protecting consumer privacy. Google is already pointing the way forward with their work on the Privacy Sandbox, which seeks to create a privacy-first web that still allows marketers to reach consumers with targeted marketing. As other industry leaders come up with similar developments, marketers must help businesses take advantage of these advancements.

How Can Brands Reach High-Value Customers While Preserving Consumer Privacy?

Privacy is important to consumers! But even consumers who want control and transparency around their personal data still expect a useful web experience. And businesses continue to want ads to be both relevant and timely to potential high-value customers. Marketers provide a service to both companies and to consumers by helping connect brands with the customers who actually want to buy their products. But with third-party cookies going away, it’s up to marketers to find new ways to make this connection happen.

While some ad tech companies have come up with tracking options that mimic third-party cookies’ ability to identify individual consumers — which may violate the spirit of consumer privacy expectations even if these options don’t run into trouble with regulations — Google has come out to say that once third-party cookies are gone, they won’t create “alternate identifiers” for tracking individuals across the web or for use in their products. Instead, Google is developing ways to create cohorts of individuals with common interests, as well as exploring how to use data stored on consumers’ devices to connect them with relevant content all while protecting privacy and identifying information. Chrome aims to give users more control over their privacy settings and we can expect other industry players to strive for this, too.

Developing strong relationships directly with consumers is one of the best ways to ensure a business can collect the data it needs to successfully market to its customers. Customers are more likely to consent to brands they know and trust accessing and storing their data, so making every effort to build that trust is in a business’s best interest. By taking steps like instituting brand loyalty programs and creating compelling content for web and social media, your business can reach new and existing customers and market to them directly with the products and services that will most interest them.  

How Can NetElixir Help My Business Meet Privacy Needs While Reaching Customers?

NetElixir stays on top of industry updates so your e-commerce business is always ahead of the curve. We’ll make sure your business is complying with privacy regulations and laws while taking advantage of the newest tools and opportunities to meet consumer privacy expectations while serving up digital marketing campaigns that will put your brand in front of the right customers. Whether it’s time to switch over to Google Analytics 4 so you’re ready for third-party deprecation, or you need a web presence refresh to make sure your UX is on point while complying with the latest regulations in your market, NetElixir is here to support you.

Ready to Learn More?
Contact NetElixir to discover how we can help your e-commerce business meet consumer privacy expectations while developing marketing strategies that will effectively reach your best customers in the post-cookie world.

Additional Resources:

• Go Organic: Your SEO Strategy In The Cookieless World
• Christmas in May: Your Holiday Strategy in the Cookieless World
• Navigating Apple’s iOS Privacy Updates

The post How Consumer Privacy Expectations Are Shifting appeared first on NetElixir.