Most customers want a successful web design, a website that brings in customers and sales. And there are a million things to think about when building a website, in order to make it successful. But with modern trends turning more towards privacy, the use of tracking cookies is becoming more of a burden, rather than a helpful tool.
Enter the Privacy Laws & GDPR
Before 2018 it was a no-brainer to use all kinds of tracking cookies, Google Analytics, Meta Pixels or Google Tags were the main tracking cookies used. Obviously this gave you many insights into how visitors interacted with your website and gave you vast amounts of information on how to tweak your advertising campaigns or website to get more conversions.
The Google Ads Downward Spiral
It was only 2021 when Google Ads started rolling out their “Consent Mode” to address the EU Privacy Laws. But they didn’t really enforce it until March 2024. This basically forced people to add a Cookie Consent Banner to their website so people can “accept” tracking cookies.
But in practice, the EU Privacy Laws completely ruined the effectiveness of Google Ads. After Consent Mode came in, in my experience, Google Ads campaigns became wildly ineffective, without being able to use personal or geographical information about users, Google ads became basically useless.
So, the EU Laws rendered millions of companies incapable of running effective advertising.
Over the last few years, Google has improved massively and certain campaigns are becoming more predictable. But it is still a far cry from before the EU laws came in.
Modern Browsers & Search Engines
In recent times more browsers and search engines are ignoring tracking cookies, and some search engines like DuckDuckGo prioritise websites that do not use any tracking cookies. And I believe this trend will continue.
Why not fly blind?
When I’m building a website, I always recommend that the customer stays away from using tracking cookies. And I see a huge benefit in doing so, with anonymous statistics available, I can see a healthy number of sales coming directly from DuckDuckGo for example, or ChatGPT, or Gemini.
And it’s the experience that I acquired before the GDPR rules came in, that allows me to fly blind. From spending years managing different websites using all kinds of tracking cookies, I learned how to make a website more effective.
Measuring your results
It shouldn’t take the World’s best accountant to tell you that you should make more money in sales than you spend on advertising. And there are many other ways to measure your results, without using tracking cookies. Anonymous data is gathered about the source of any visitor to your website, so there are various ways to tell if your latest sale came from an organic Google search, a Facebook link, a DuckDuckGo search or ChatGPT or whatever.
You should not need a million statistics to know if a campaign is working, or you are getting the correct traffic. The only statistic that really matters is your sales, or bank balance!
That is why experience matters
Web designers that have a long history and large portfolio will clearly be better than a novice. But it’s specifically the experience of using analytical tools before 2018 that gives experienced web designers a huge advantage.
Without needing to use tracking cookies to build an effective website, will be a huge benefit towards building a successful company web design. The removal of tracking cookies from a web design project gives the customer many benefits and increased traffic, if the website is built properly.