How GDPR is changing web design

There was a fair amount of panic surrounding the introduction of GDPR in May 2018. Business owners and web users alike were confused about what exactly the new regulations meant and how it would impact online marketing. Now that GDPR has had some time to make its effect felt, it’s possible to assess how it is changing areas such as web design.

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According to the experts at the online Search Engine Journal, GDPR was actually good news for SEO. One of the reasons for this is that marketers now have to make sure that their content really matches user intent.

Cookies and web design

Third party cookies are essentially set by a content host in your web browser when you visit their website. It creates a unique identifier and this can be used to track your use of the web. So, for example, if you visit a current affairs website, your browser may download some content and that would be called ‘first-party content’. However, your browser may also download ‘third-party content’ which has come from some other URL.

It means that your IP address and other identifiers are being shared and used to track how you use the web. These are called cookies and they are used by advertisers, developers and designers, to name a few.

If you are a Swindon business owner and you are looking for help with web design Swindon web experts will be able to advise you about how cookies can work for you. If you need a Swindon web designer visit http://www.webdesignerswindon.co.uk/ to get up to date guidance about this rapidly changing field.

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Cookies and GDPR

Third party cookies have been affected by GDPR. In the past, web pages may have had hundreds of cookies to track your browsing behaviour and this was considered a part of design optimisation. A recent survey of over 200 news sites carried out by Reuters Institute showed that they have reduced by 22 percent since GDPR took effect.

The biggest drop (45%) was reported in the UK where previously the news sites contained the largest number of cookies. Two categories of third party cookies dropped the most and these were design optimisation cookies which fell by 27 percent and advertising and marketing cookies which fell by 14 percent.