By now you must have encountered the popup messages requesting you “Accept” the retrieval and storing of information on your computer! Say, what? Store and retrieve information? Yes. What information? Before diving into what information is stored let’s first go over where this information is stored.

Cookies. What are Cookies? Cookies are a kind of short term memory for the web. They are stored in your browser and enable a site to ‘remember’ little bits of information between pages or visits.

Cookies are widely used to make the web experience more personal, which is generally seen as a positive thing. However, some cookies collect data across many websites, creating ‘behavioral profiles’ of people. These profiles can then be used to decide what content or adverts to show you. This use of cookies for targeting in particular is what the law was designed to highlight. By requiring websites to inform and obtain consent from visitors it aims to give web users more control over their online privacy.

Personalizing content for your site visitors is becoming more of the mainstream norm. For example, let's assume you want to show a unique message to first-time visitors. To do this you need to track the incoming visitors and log the number of visits. Using cookies you can store visitation counts. Each time a visitor arrives you can store or retrieve the information into or from the cookie using technology such as Google Tag Manager or Google Optimize.

If you understand the concept of A/B testing then you will really appreciate cookies. User engagement is essential to the success of your website. Implementing dynamic changes can make all the difference in the world and drive better conversions.

So, Cookies are not just sweet and delicious but are becoming a necessary part of the digital marketing strategy for my businesses. Here are just a few things you can store in cookies related to your visitor:

• Name*
• Email*
• Phone Numbers*
• Shopping Cart Data
• Visitor IP address
• Session Counts
• Visited Pages
• Buttons Clicked
• Usernames*
• Passwords*

*data such as these items require user input before storing the information into cookies.

Conclusion