Analytics and cookie consent: a plain-English guide for small businesses
You can learn how people use your website without nagging them or breaking the rules. Here is the approach we use ourselves.
Analytics tells you which pages work and where people give up. In our research, 55% of Yorkshire small business websites had none. Often the worry is cookies and consent. This is general guidance, not legal advice.
The rule in brief
In the UK, you generally need consent before setting non-essential cookies, including analytics cookies. Strictly necessary storage, such as remembering a visitor’s cookie choice, does not need consent.
A simple approach
Ask clearly, with an equally easy yes and no. Do not set analytics cookies until someone says yes. Let people change their mind with a link in the footer, and explain it in your privacy notice.
Cookie-free analytics
Some tools, including Microsoft Clarity, can run without cookies until consent is given, so you still learn how pages are used without identifying repeat visitors. That is how this website works.
Write it down
Your privacy notice should say what you use, what it collects, the cookies it sets and how to change your choice. Keep it short and specific.
Every website we build includes analytics and a consent banner set up this way.
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