How to Add a Cookie Consent Policy to Your Shopify Store in Minutes

Adding cookie consent policies to a website has become standard practice. Ever since GDPR redefined data privacy in Europe, other jurisdictions have been following suit in implementing more rigorous data protection regulations. Shopify stores that want to expand their business to European customers must ensure they comply or else face penalties from the regulator.

One of the easiest ways for e-commerce stores to begin complying with GDPR is to place a cookie consent notification banner on their website. The notice must be accompanied by a cookie consent policy that details how cookies are used and how the data gathered is shared with third parties. While there’s an overwhelming number of applications and plugins that let you do this, it’s possible to set up a cookie consent notice and policy on your Shopify store by yourself just by entering some lines of code.

Enabling Cookie Consent on Your Shopify Store

Here are a few steps you can follow to enable cookie consent yourself without any technical coding knowledge:

1. Verify that your Shopify settings are correct. Before you start with the consent policy, you should go to your Shopify dashboard, select Online Store, and then click Preferences. Scroll down to the Customer Privacy section and select the applicable option that sets up data privacy for your store.
2. Create a cookie policy. You should already have a privacy policy on your website, but adding a cookie policy for your e-commerce website is a good idea too. While it’s not necessary to have a separate page for compliance, it helps to have someplace that privacy-conscious users can go if they need more information. Read here to see how to add and edit your Shopify store policies.
3. Configure metrics and third-party scripts. Now you need to configure any of your analytics gathering services like Google Analytics accordingly. Anything you’ve added to Shopify that uses cookies should be analyzed and added to the cookie policy.

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Alternatively, you can opt to use a service to help you use Shopify cookies and collect cookie consent for you.

What to Include in a Cookie Consent Policy

For e-commerce stores to comply with GDPR cookie consent regulations, users need to know what data is collected, what it’s used for, and who it’s shared with. This is what the cookie consent policy outlines.

The cookie policy is different from the privacy policy and doesn’t replace the privacy policy, but should outline how cookies are used to collect data. The entire process, including collection, processing, and sharing should be outlined and explained to the user in simple terms. Any names of partner companies and what information is shared with them should be listed. If you offer a list where users can choose which cookies they want to opt in and out of, you should list each of those types of cookies in the cookie policy as well.

Implementing a Cookie Consent Notification Banner on Shopify

In order to fulfill cookie consent banner requirements, users must be able to make an informed decision when consenting to cookie use through the banner. This notification gives some brief details, has buttons for consent agreement or rejection (including a cookie management panel), and links to policy pages. Here’s how to add one to your website with coding:

1. Build the cookie consent dialog. The simplest way to add your own pop-up is to use PrivacyPolicies’ Cookie Consent tool. Follow the steps and select the correct options depending on your use case, then copy the code.
2. Add the dialog to your Shopify store. Now that you’ve copied the cookie consent code, you need to integrate it with your Shopify theme. Go to your Shopify Dashboard, open your Online Store dropdown, and select Themes. Under your Current Theme, select Actions and then Edit Code. Open the “theme.liquid” file and paste the code you copied in the first step just above the </body> tag near the end of the file, then click Save.
3. Test to see if it works. Open your Shopify store in an incognito browser mode and check if the pop-up appears and works as desired.

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Now You Have a Basic Cookie Consent Policy

Now you’re done setting up a basic cookie consent policy and notification banner for your website. While this process is pretty straightforward, if you run into any issues, you can always reach out to experts to handle implementation for you.