Websites
Is a cookie banner required on your website?
Short answer
A cookie banner is only required if your website uses cookies or similar techniques that need consent, such as advertising cookies, social media tracking pixels and embeds that follow visitors. For cookies that are technically necessary, such as a shopping basket or a login, you do not have to ask. The same goes for statistics that barely touch privacy. A site without trackers needs no banner, and for a business site that is often achievable.
What is the rule about?
Everything a website stores on a visitor’s device or reads from it. Cookies are the best known, but pixels, scripts that recognise a device and storage in the browser count too. In the Netherlands the rule is in the Telecommunicatiewet, the Dutch telecommunications act. As soon as personal data is processed as well, the GDPR (in Dutch, the AVG) applies on top.
The main rule: inform first and ask for consent. There are two exceptions.
Which cookies are allowed without consent?
| Kind | Example | Consent needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Functional | Shopping basket, login, language choice | No |
| Statistics with little privacy intrusion | Visitor numbers without profiles or sharing with third parties | No |
| Statistics that follow visitors or share data | Google Analytics in the default setup | Yes |
| Advertising and remarketing | Pixels from Meta, Google Ads, LinkedIn | Yes |
| Embedded third-party content | YouTube, maps, social media, some chat tools | Yes, unless loaded only after a click |
Even where consent is not required, you must tell visitors what you do. That goes in a privacy statement.
Why do almost all sites have a banner, then?
Because they load more than they need. An average business site has a measuring tool, an advertising pixel that was once placed for a campaign, an embedded video and fonts fetched from a third party. Someone added each of these for a good reason. Together they make a banner mandatory.
For an online shop that advertises, that is a deliberate choice. For the site of an installation company or an accountancy firm, it is usually a leftover.
What does a banner cost you?
More than the annoyance. A banner is the first thing a visitor sees and clicks away. It loads extra code, which slows the site down and hits Google’s measurements. How that works is covered in Core Web Vitals explained. And a banner that does not meet the rules is a bigger risk than no banner on a site that does not need one.
How do you build a site without a banner?
By asking of each component whether it is needed.
- Measure without following. There are measuring tools that count visits without cookies and without passing on data. You see how many visitors come and which pages they read. Who they were, you do not see, and you do not need to.
- Fonts on your own server. Saves a request to a third party and makes the site faster.
- Load the video only after a click. The visitor sees a still image; the YouTube player only comes when they tap it.
- A map as an image with a link to the directions.
- No pixels without a campaign. If no advertising campaign is running, the pixel has no purpose.
Our own site works this way: no cookies, no trackers, fonts on our own server. At the bottom of every page it says so in one sentence, and there is no banner.
And if you do advertise?
Then you need a banner, and it has to be right.
- Load nothing before the choice. Showing a banner while the pixels are already running is the most common mistake.
- Refusing as easy as accepting.
- No pre-ticked boxes.
- The choice can be changed later.
- Explain per purpose what happens, in plain language.
We are not lawyers. For an assessment of your situation, see the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens or ask a privacy lawyer. What we do when we build a website is build it so that the question stays as small as possible.