Get 100% more cookie consents from a Consent Banner (without breaking GDPR)

You can style consent banner in many ways. However, there is one particular design which gives you more consents than others – without breaking GDPR. What is it?

These are the results of making the changes I am going to tell you about.

results of changes to consent banner

As you can see, the measured traffic was at 150 users a day, and it jumped to 300. Of course, if you are already using some of the practices I am going to tell you about, the increase will not be so big.

And here are the images of the banner before and after the changes:

Before the changes…

consent banner. before changes

…and after.

consent banner. best practices

Now, let me tell you what was changed, what could be changed (for some websites) and why.

#1 Show the consent banner in the centre of the screen

If you think about placing the banner in the corner of the screen or at the bottom… don’t. Out of all these options, placing the banner in the central position is by far the best.

Consent Banner on our website

Banners placed in the centre:

  1. get in the way of browsing the site forcing visitors to make a choice.
  2. prevent other page elements from being clicked (or at least this is how WP Full Picture’s consent banner works). And this is important of several reasons:

You track more people (with tools that require previous consent).

Since only a portion of your visitors agree to tracking, it is important that as many as possible see the notice and make a decision. If you let a part of your visitors not to make any choice, then you are losing data on the table.

You have more information about sources of traffic

When people visit your website, your tracking tools can access the domain of the referring site, track it and display it in your reports.

However, when people agree to tracking on the second, third or any next pages then tracking tools can no longer access this information, and report the traffic source as direct entry.

You track more sources of conversion (which can reduce costs of ad campaigns)

As you may have noticed, when people click an ad on the internet, the accessed URL contains a number of additional parameters. These parameters allow tracking tools to define the exact ad and ad campaign that referred traffic to the site.

However, when people agree to tracking not on the first page of the visit, but on the second or further, then the tracking tools will not see these parameters and will not know what campaign referred the traffic.

#2 Enable background overlay

consent banner background overlay

We highly recommend you enable background overlay behind the centrally positioned banner. This makes the banner pop-out (especially on white backgrounds) and explains the people why they cannot click anything on the page except the banner.

#3 Lock page scrolling

Preventing page scrolls is recommended for content-heavy website. By doing this, you prevent people from reading your content without making choice.

#4 Go big

Go with the widest banner option, widest paddings, biggest buttons and (at least) the recommended font sizes. And do not worry that it will take over a big portion of the screen – this is what you want.

wpfp consent banner sizes

To increase the number of consents, you need to make sure that your visitors will not be able to comfortably read the content of your site without choosing their tracking preferences.

And if you worry that some of them may leave the page without making a choice, then don’t. If they weren’t motivated enough to click a button in the banner, they wouldn’t make good clients either.

#5 Show all buttons on the banner

This is an optional one, so make sure to test it for a short period.

wp fp consent banner statistics button

WP Full Picture v8 will come with an extra button that you can show in your banner – “Agree only to statistics”. So in total, you will be able to show 4 buttons: “Agree to all”, “Decline” “Cookie settings” and “Only statistics”.

By adding this button to the consent banner you achieve 2 things:

  1. you gives more choices to the visitor (duh)
  2. but also, you make the choice a tiny bit more difficult.

Hence, more people will not read the content of the buttons and just click the first option they see.

But be warned, adding this button can sometimes backfire, and lower the number of marketing consents, so make sure to test it for a few days.

What are your results?

If you like this article and decided to implement some of these changes, please let me know your results. Write them in the comments for other readers.

Or maybe you have your own ideas on how to maximize the number of consents? Share them below. Thanks!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments