Getting started with cookie consent
The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. A short on-ramp to cookie consent for teams who have not touched it before.
The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
The reason this keeps coming up
A banner does not make non-compliant tracking compliant. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Non-essential scripts must wait for consent
- Change one thing and measure it
Make refusing as easy as accepting. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
In practice
Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. Three things worth confirming about cookie consent before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Non-essential scripts must wait for consent — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.