Cookie banner

[davidhunter08]

What

A cookie banner gives users a choice of accepting recommended cookies or making a choice over which ones to allow.

Why

Currently used on the NHS website.

[davidhunter08]

Hey @karlgoldstraw, are you writing the guidance for the cookie banner?

[karlgoldstraw]

Heya @davidhunter08, I thought that @bencullimore and the team were picking it up, but, we will be updating the cookie banner again in the near future to comply with the new ICO guidance and so, if it's not been done yet, might be best to wait for the next iteration. I will check this.

[karlgoldstraw]

Heya @davidhunter08, I thought that @bencullimore and the team were picking it up, but, we will be updating the cookie banner again in the near future to comply with the new ICO guidance and so, if it's not been done yet, might be best to wait for the next iteration. I will check this.

Confirmed: We will wait until our next iteration to write the guidance, as this current version is now out of date.

[davidhunter08]

Cheers @karlgoldstraw

[devansXD]

@davidhunter08 @karlgoldstraw Has any progress been made on this? I dont think we need to change ours, but ICO guidance being what it is, its hard to know exactly.

[davidhunter08]

Hi @devansXD, there is a team within the NHS.UK programme currently working on a new solution.

I’ve been told that:

Version 1 will be released before the end of September. This will be very much an immediate fix to get the NHS website compliant

Version 2 (aiming to be released in November) should be a better/mature pattern which will get added to the service manual - for an explicit opt in model.

The NHS website alone could set around 100+ cookies if people opted in to them all, but it will be down to other programmes regarding what approach they take. Even if it's just Google Analytics and/or HotJar they will need to ask people to opt in.

Hope this helps.

[devansXD]

Cheers @davidhunter08 that provides a bit of clarity

[davidhunter08]

GOV.UK Design System:

• Cookie banner
• Cookies page

[bencullimore]

Would be good to document how the cookie banner works across a domain.

For example;

a) should the main NHS website (nhs.uk) cookie banner list ALL cookies for every page/website that lives on www.nhs.uk domain, regardless if a user visits every page and/or it's a separately owned/managed website/service with a different brand e.g. health campaign sites such as www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters

or

b) should the cookie banner be website/service specific? Only detailing specific cookies for each service at the point of visiting said service/website.

Option (a) has the potential for the cookie banner to be large, we're warning users about cookies that they might never interact with.

GOV guidance on cookie banners states:

Include the name of the service in the banner heading to help users understand that the cookies you’re talking about are different from the ones set by the main GOV.UK platform. (https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/cookie-banner/)

So feels like a use case for separate cookie banner

[cameronross2]

There are some really interesting insights from AB testing done on Teaching Vacancies. They tested multiple designs to see how user interaction was affected, and which designs resulted in higher acceptance. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issues/12#issuecomment-860814605

[cameronross2]

enquires.test-and-trace.nhs.uk has a pop up cookie notification, as well as a traditional cookie banner at the top of the page

[chrimesdev]

https://ourfuturehealth.org.uk/

[CatherineReader]

Informed that this website is being transformed https://campaignresources.phe.gov.uk/resources

[paulfourniercarey]

@davidhunter08 @deanvipondNHS Hi. Are there any stats on how many people accept / reject / choose on the nhs.uk website?

[georginaplatt]

Hi @paulfourniercarey Dave & Dean are no longer working for NHSD, sorry you've waited a bit for a response.

For the NHS website it's 30% of page views and 50% of sessions. The sessions percentage was worked out comparing the Google Search Console data to our analytics data as we couldn't capture session data until the user accepts cookies, an approach also taken by GDS independently, which validated the approach. For the view link, we don't have data on the banner link clicks, as we're not tracking these users yet. But we've had 105,214 estimated visits to the cookies policy page this year so far.

[marianthi-design]

Thanks for sharing these stats @georginaplatt

We've recently launched our FNHS private beta platform and the vast majority of the users don't accept the cookies. For example on hotjar less that 10% recording sessions were captured.

We are thinking to post a blog about how useful analytics are for designing useful services and we'd like to encourage people to accept cookies.

Has anyone find any ways to increase the uptake of users accepting cookies? Any learnings would be very useful!

[sarawilcox]

I was looking at the NHS website on a different browser this morning (Samsung Internet browser). I have poor eyesight and use a bigger font, so the cookie banner filled my mobile screen. Apart from the url there was nothing to make it clear that I was on the NHS website. No branding, for example.

[sarawilcox]

Here's the NHS.UK cookie consent component: https://github.com/nhsuk/cookie-consent.

[frankieroberto]

Just a quick +1 from me as I went looking for a cookie banner component in the NHS design system, as this is something I think our service will need.

I wonder if a placeholder page which links to https://github.com/nhsuk/cookie-consent would be useful, at least in the short term?