A Future without Cookies? Brace Yourself and Your Shop!

Tech giants like Apple are starting to make it increasingly difficult to use cookies in their browsers. This could mess up your analytics because you’ll no longer know exactly how many unique visitors you have and you won’t get those important insights into their shopping behaviour.

Keep in mind that it’s not just Apple working on this. Google Chrome is also planning to stop including cookies. That’s why you need to brace yourself and your online shop for a future without cookies. How? We’ll help you, just keep reading!

In this article we talk about the following topics:

• ❔ What are cookies?
• 🍪 Cookies in e-commerce
• ❌Why everyone wants to get rid of cookies
• 📬 The future of marketing without cookies
• 📊 Doing analytics without cookies

❔ What are cookies?

What are cookies literally?

Let's get a bit more specific: These cookies are small pieces of code that track which pages the user visits. Among other things, cookies can be used to learn about what visitors do on the site, how long they are staying, and if they visit other pages on that website.

Cookies are used to collect information on the site’s visitors. This data is then analyzed in order to subsequently build user profiles or personas.

In addition, cookies are used to detect and save the preferences of a user, such as the screen size or the products that they have placed in the shopping cart, so there are benefits to the visitor as well.

When you’re making use of cookies on your website, it’s important that you inform your visitors about it and to ask them for their permission to use cookies.

🍪 Cookies in e-commerce

As an online shop owner, you apply cookies to your website to find out what your visitors are doing on your website and what interests your potential customers have. 

• Do they stay on a page for a long time, or do they just click through?
• Which steps do your customers go through before placing (or canceling) an order?
• When you offer discounts, which items do customers prefer to look at afterwards?

It’s important to find out this sort of information because you can adapt your marketing strategy accordingly, whether that means adjusting the checkout process or adjusting the texts on your website. You can truly learn a lot about the consumer journey with this data. 

shutterstock.com/Martin Gardeazabal

Another issue is that when it comes to targeted ads, it is quite difficult to show them without cookies. As you probably already know, when you visit certain websites (usually online shops), cookies are the reason you will later see an advertisement for the same brand the next time you log into Facebook (or other online services).

The advantage as a consumer is that you will only receive advertisements that may be of interest to you. 

For sellers, it’s important, because your ads will have a lower cost-per-click (CPCs) when your click-rate is high. A high click-rate is dependent on your ads being shown to a relevant audience (which you have thanks to cookies!).

❌Why everyone wants to get rid of cookies

The main reason “everyone” wants to get rid of cookies: privacy.

In 2018, the new General Data Protection Regulation (also known as GDPR) came into effect.

In principle, cookies are anonymous because your name and other personal data are not stored. That is why cookies are still permitted by the GDPR. However, cookies haven't been very transparent in the past. Think about yourself: do you know what cookies store about you? Probably not.

The EU has taken its first steps in regulating this transparency. Nowadays, you have to accept cookies everywhere (you get a pop-up about this) before you can browse a website normally. But, even now, do you actually read what you agree with? Probably not.

Note: at the moment, it is mainly about the 3rd party cookies and tracking cookies that go away. However, this does not necessarily mean that 1st party cookies will also be dealt with.

📬 The future of marketing without cookies

What will marketing look like in a future where there are no cookies?

This is probably the most pressing question for you as an online retailer. How can marketing remain affordable (and profitable) in a future without cookies? 

Don’t worry, we have a couple of ideas for you!

Where is your target audience?

The first question to ask yourself when you start marketing is always: who is my target audience. 

The second question should be: where is my target audience? If your target audience is the elderly, you probably won't be advertising on TikTok.

However, there is more to it than just which platform or medium your target audience is using, but also where exactly on the platform they are active. 

That's how it used to be, in the world before the internet. Traditional advertising would look to place ads where their audience was more likely to be in the physical world or what physical mediums they were consuming. 

For example, if you sell fishing equipment, you would look for a fishing sports magazine to advertise in. In the digital world, this strategy could be applied as well and you could advertise on fishing websites, for example. You could also sponsor a fishing-podcaster or blogger directly.

Offline marketing

As we just touched on, you can also go back to the old advertising methods and advertise through the mail! 

As we already mentioned in the paragraph above, this could be an opportunity for you anyway, given that in recent years less and less physical mail (except for parcels of course) has been sent. 

This means that you are not one in many, but perhaps the only ad in your (future) customer's mailbox. In fact, research shows that the younger generation likes to receive mail and also advertising. 

Of course, TV and radio are also options. Print ads are, too.

Keywords

Another good way to advertise online is using keywords. Optimal keyword selection is of course the main factor for successful Google Ads campaigns. 

Keywords are very specific, so you can still target your advertisements directly to your target group very effectively. Simply put, cookies aren’t necessary for most Google Ads because they are based on Google search enquiries, not a user’s browsing history.

📊 Doing analytics without cookies

New ways are constantly being found to make analyses. Here are some short-term ideas:

Surveys

A good way to find out what your target audience wants is to conduct a survey. You can, for example, conduct a survey via a pop-up for those visiting your website, or one that you send by email after customers have placed an order.

Another idea: you could create an extra checkbox in the checkout section asking your customers if they want to improve your shop by filling out a survey. This way it would seem less like spam to them.

When you create a survey, think carefully about what you want to ask and whether the wording is clear. Also, keep the survey as short as possible! Nobody wants to fill in a long questionnaire.

All in all, surveys are basically like focus groups, a concept that long predates online marketing.

Reviews and your Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Something that ties in with the survey is, of course, the NPS and customer reviews. It’s highly possible that customer ratings will play an even more important role in the cookie-less future. 

It’s therefore important not only to receive negative ratings (so that you know what you can improve), but also positive ratings (for your online reputation of course).

The Trusted Shops solutions, for example, help you to stay on top of those things. You can ask for shop reviews for your online shop as a whole, but you can also send out product review requests for feedback on specific products. 

If you get a lot of good reviews for a certain product, that is, of course, very revealing. And it can even boost sales: if a customer sees a lot of positive reviews for a product (or for your online shop), customers are more inclined to make a purchase. If you also have local shops, local reviews can also help.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Google Ads of all kinds often have the ability to display your star-ratings (based on the feedback you collect with a Google-certified reviews partner), which can be a huge factor in boosting your ads’ click-through rates (and lowering your CPCs).

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a type of rating system that mainly rates your shop’s service. The question here is: To what extent would customers recommend x (i.e. your shop) to family, friends or acquaintances?

The only disadvantage with the NPS system is that you cannot ask specific questions, it’s only used to measure your shop’s quality.

More information when ordering

You may want to ask for more information from every customer when they order products from your shop. However, you cannot make questionnaires compulsory because you don’t need this sort of information to complete their order (that would violate GDPR regulations).

However, analysing your customer data can provide a lot of information. Therefore, you could find out which products customers tend to order again. You can also look further into returns and ask customers why they decided to return the item.

🔄 Conclusion

You’ve learned how you can collect information about your (potential) customers without having to use cookies. However, at the moment it seems that only 3rd party cookies will be a problem in the future and 1st party cookies can still be used.

Nevertheless, even if you use 1st party cookies, you will have to change your marketing strategy. After all, we must not forget that it's quite normal in the world of marketing to undergo and adjust to changes. 

People are trying their best to find solutions to deal with this change, so don’t worry! There might already be a new technology waiting in line to solve this very issue, without having to violate your user’s privacy.

The most important thing for you to do as an online shop owner is to keep doing your best to acquire new customers and brace yourself for a future without cookies.

This article was originally published on our Dutch blog: Een toekomst zonder cookies: bereid je voor