Open Forum

Hi there! We've been researching the need (or not) for a cookie banner pop-up on our website. Something that allows users to opt-in or out of tracking cookies. We've seen some museums who have implemented this, but others who have not. 

Does anyone have any guidance on whether this is now considered best-practice? Or any vendors or resources you found helpful?

Thanks!

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Colette Fahy
Digital Marketing Manager
International Spy Museum
Washington DC
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Hello, Colette.

In my opinion, tracking/cookie consent has become best practice, particularly for organizations that want to responsibly serve their constituents. We use OneTrust as our tracking consent manager - it's fairly easy to implement. All tracking/analytics scripts only load when users have granted consent via the small "toast" popup. 

This will of course affect your metrics - increasing numbers of users are blocking tracking either automatically or by choice, and asking for consent before tracking usage will almost certainly add to that. Since these numbers are getting less reliable, we're talking about some more qualitative metrics and performance indicators. We're also implementing a simple counter script to get a sense of the untracked vs. tracked page views, etc.

Hope that's helpful.

Brian

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Brian Hewitt
Manager, Digital Experience Design
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning, NY
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Thanks Brian!

That is so helpful. We were looking at OneTrust as well. It's a little more expensive than other options so glad to hear it's working well for you. It seems like it's worth the small investment.

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Colette Fahy
Digital Marketing Manager
International Spy Museum
Washington DC
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-17-2023 09:36 AM
From: Brian Hewitt
Subject: Consent Management for Website - Cookie Banners

Hello, Colette.

In my opinion, tracking/cookie consent has become best practice, particularly for organizations that want to responsibly serve their constituents. We use OneTrust as our tracking consent manager - it's fairly easy to implement. All tracking/analytics scripts only load when users have granted consent via the small "toast" popup. 

This will of course affect your metrics - increasing numbers of users are blocking tracking either automatically or by choice, and asking for consent before tracking usage will almost certainly add to that. Since these numbers are getting less reliable, we're talking about some more qualitative metrics and performance indicators. We're also implementing a simple counter script to get a sense of the untracked vs. tracked page views, etc.

Hope that's helpful.

Brian

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Brian Hewitt
Manager, Digital Experience Design
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning, NY
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