The Cookie Conspiracy: part two
In part one, we talked about defining cookies based on their mission in websites. I tried to decriminalize them in reaction to the common misconception that cookies are like little spy devices feeding personal information about you to would-be spammers and terrorists.
We discussed the reality that most cookies are only tracking website traffic trends in order to get an overall idea about what pages are popular on a website and how the average user experiences the website. Cookies in this sense are used to track the tribe movements, not the individual peasants. First party cookies are the most commonly used type of cookie and they don't know your name and credit card number.
Let's continue by identifying the most common categories of cookies, what they are used for and when you might pick them up in your merry website travels.
First Party Cookies
If someone is running Google Analytics or some other traffic analyzation tool on their website, this is what they are using in 99.9% of cases. Google Analytics uses these exclusively.
First-party cookies are cookies that are associated with the host domain. That means that the website you are looking at sends you these upon visiting. These cookies are uniquely assigned to your user profile and can be read only by the host domain that issued it to you.
These types of cookies typically track;
- The length of the visit
- Whether this is a first or return visit
- What pages were visited
- What buttons were clicked
Anatomy of a typical Visitor Identification first party cookie issued by a website using Google Analytics;
Cookie guts = [domain that set the cookie] - [a random unique ID number for your computer] - [the time of the initial visit] - [the beginning time of a previous visit] - [the beginning time of the current session]
Third Party Cookies
It's possible that upon visiting a website an advertiser or partner in business with the website owner will give you a cookie. It's likely that they are just tracking the same things that the first party cookie is tracking relative to their needs. For example they may have a banner ad campaign running and they want to see what websites their banner ad is getting people's attention on. For example; an ad running on a website that has fantastic amounts of traffic but only generates 10 clicks on the banner ad is less valuable than a website with relatively less traffic but is generating 50 clicks in the same period of time for that ad campaign.
Persistent vs. Session Cookies
First and third party cookies can be either persistent or session cookies. Session cookies live only in memory and persistant cookies live on your hard drive. Those session cookies no disappear as soon as you end the visiting session. Persistent cookies stay put in your browser's cookie library until they delete themselves based on a preset time hard coded into them or you delete them.
Cookie Warning
If you choose to fill out a form that asks personal questions or if you share personal information include yourself in an unsecured chat room, or give your banking information to an online service that does not have a reputable privacy policy and secure checkout page, you will likely still get a cookie of the same innocuous type but it can now be matched up with real personal information. Basically don't say anything in an unsecured website that you wouldn't say at a cocktail party before you start drinking.
Managing Cookies
Modern browsers have pretty good cookie management these days. You can block certain domains from giving you cookies, you can control how often they are deleted, and you can delete them whenever you want. I recommend you play around a bit with these features. It's fair to warn you though that after deleting your cookies, shopping carts may not recognize you and in some cases you may need to re-register your computer with your banking websites after you've deleted your cookies.
How to use Cookies for Good and Not Evil
It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that cookies are great for website owners who need to track traffic trends. That's what Google Analytics is for. Without cookies it's entirely a guessing game when you are trying to design a website that works best for users. Your users are still going to have to make that decision about whether to buy or click all on their own, but it's up to your website to get them to that product or information they seek as quickly and pleasantly as possible.
Bill Edmonson
Thermal Creative is a website development company in Bozeman Montana that specializes in helping businesses enhance their website performance through beautiful data driven design, superlative programming, user friendly content management systems (CMS), website marketing consulting (SEO and SEM) and email marketing.
