Member Article

What will EU policy mean for web-business?

A survey has shown that less than a quarter of web users will happily opt in to cookies, following the introduction of the EU ePrivacy Directive next month.

A survey of 1,097 web users found that 17% of people would definitely not accept cookies if prompted when arriving at a website.

60% said that they might accept them, depending on what they were used for and only 23% will provide immediate consent.

The Directive will force many UK companies to change their websites in order to provide better guidance to visitors about how cookies are used, and those not complying could be fined up to £500,000.

Cookies can be used to save the contents of a shopping cart or track user experience via web analytics for example.

21% of respondents said they would authorise cookies that were used to improve the targeting of ads.

A wider survey of 1,593 respondents found that nearly a third of web users do not know what a cookie is, nor why websites use them.

Graham Charlton of Econsultancy, the report’s author, said: “The ECPR is a major - and somewhat unwelcome - challenge for online businesses in the UK. As the survey results show, persuading users to opt in to cookies will be very difficult.

“E-commerce sites that rely on analytics to improve the user experience and maximise conversion rates, and publishers which rely on advertising income in order to offer free content online face a serious challenge.

“The law could result in a loss of data, sales and ad income for many online businesses.”

26% of visitors would provide consent to cookies that helped to make a website easy to use, while 50% would use another website.

For information on how to respond to the EU Directive, see Maxymiser’s previous advice piece on Bdaily.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .