This article explains how to create your site’s cookie consent banner, give it its shape and place, and reopen it. You will know how to offer the objection to audience measurement, show the Global Privacy Control signal and read your visitors’ answers.
Before you start
- The consent banner is a composition: a set of blocks written once. Your site displays it by itself, on every page, until the visitor has answered, in the form you give it: a bar at the bottom of the screen, a card in a corner, a window in the center or a side panel. You do not place it in any template.
- Your site loads no advertising tag and no third-party measurement tool. The banner therefore has no third-party tool to get accepted.
- Your analytics are counted by your site itself. They are counted without waiting for the visitor’s answer. The Audience measurement objection block lets a visitor stop being counted.
Create the banner
The design catalog footers create the banner with their Manage my cookies link. A home page creation therefore creates it with your header and footer. If your site has no banner, create it this way.
- In the Dashboard of your Staging’s admin, click the step Place the consent banner. The Templates > Compositions screen opens.
- Create a composition. In its panel, choose the Role Consent banner.
- Insert one of the three creations from the catalog: Consent banner: bottom bar, Consent banner: corner card or Consent banner: window. Each places a heading, a paragraph and the Cookie consent manager block with its two buttons.
- Publish the composition. The banner appears on your visitors’ next page.
The step Place the consent banner is checked when a composition holds this role and carries the Cookie consent manager block. A banner designed without this block asks a question whose answer is not recorded.
A role belongs to a language. On a multilingual site, each translation of the banner holds the role in its language. Each page displays the banner of its language.
Understand when the banner is displayed
| Visitor’s situation | What they see |
|---|---|
| They have not answered yet. | The banner is on every page. |
| They close a window or a panel without answering, with the Esc key or a click on the background. | Nothing is recorded. The banner returns on the next page. A bar or a card does not close: it stays until an answer. |
| They accept, reject or save a choice with the Save button. | The page reloads without the banner. It no longer displays by itself. |
| Thirteen months have passed since their first visit. | The banner returns. |
The banner is written at the start of the page. A screen reader meets it before the header and the first tab stops enter it.
Choose the shape of the banner
The banner is designed in the editor of its composition, with the settings of any block. A bar or a card leaves the page usable: the visitor reads and answers whenever they want. A window or a side panel waits for the answer: the page below is inert as long as it is open.
A bar or a card
- Select the Container block at the root of the composition.
- In the Size & Spacing panel, set Position to Fixed.
- In Offset, give the edge: Bottom 0, Left 0 and Right 0 for a bar; Bottom 24 px and Right 24 px for a card at the bottom right, with a maximum width in the same panel.
- In the Effects panel, give a Z-index, for example 1000, so that the banner passes in front of a sticky header.
- In HTML tag, choose aside and write the Region name, for example Cookie consent. Screen readers announce the banner under this name.
The three creations from the catalog apply these settings. To move the card to the left, empty Right and give Left 24 px.
A window or a side panel
- Insert the Overlay block, alone at the root of the composition. This block is offered only in a template’s editor and in the editor of the composition that holds the role Consent banner: give the role, then reopen the editor.
- In its toolbar, set Position to Center for a window or to Side panel.
- Write the banner in the block’s panel: a heading first, which names the window for screen readers, then the text and the Cookie consent manager.
- Give the panel its background, its borders and its maximum width: it has no starting style. The background behind the window is colored in the background block.
The window opens as soon as the page is read. It closes without an answer with the Esc key or a click on the background, and returns on the next page: the two buttons are the real way out. The Dismiss overlay block adds a cross.
Reopen the banner from a link
So that a visitor can change their mind, add a link that reopens the banner, for example Manage my cookies in your footer. The design catalog footers already carry one.
- Select a button, a menu link or a link in a text.
- In the Link panel, click the Search or paste a URL… field. The list opens before any search.
- Choose Consent banner, marked Composition. Link opening disappears from the panel: the banner always displays in its own form.
- Save, then publish.
On click, the banner displays as you designed it, even if the visitor has already answered. Their new answer replaces the old one. As long as they have not answered, a bar or a card is already on the page: the link leads to it. A window they closed reopens. On a multilingual site, the link displays the banner of the page’s language.
Compose the banner
The banner is edited in the editor like a page: texts, colors, layout and animations. Buttons and toggles are placed only in the Cookie consent manager block, whose toolbar offers Block, Flex and Grid like that of a container: Flex puts the two buttons side by side.
| Block | Role | Settings |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie consent manager | Wraps all the consent blocks. Required. | Flex or grid layout, colors, typography, borders, effects and animations. |
| Accept all cookies | A button that records the visitor’s consent. | Its label (Accept all if left empty) and its styles. |
| Reject all cookies | A button that records the visitor’s refusal. | Its label (Reject all if left empty) and its styles. |
| Tracker toggles | One toggle per third-party tool enabled, then a Save button. | Its layout. The block displays nothing as long as no third-party tool is enabled. |
| Audience measurement objection | A toggle that removes the visitor from your analytics, then a Save button. | Its label (Object to anonymous audience measurement if left empty) and its styles. |
| Global Privacy Control notice | A sentence displayed only to visitors whose browser sends this signal. | Its text and its styles. |
In the creation’s banner, the two buttons are called Accept and Reject. Change their label by writing in the button.
Understand the visitor’s answer
- The visitor clicks a button in the banner, or flips a toggle then clicks Save.
- Their choice is encrypted then recorded in your site’s
cookie_consentcookie. - The page reloads, without the banner.
A new choice replaces the previous one: rejecting after accepting removes the consent. An objection to audience measurement stays in place when the visitor then answers the banner.
The cookie_consent cookie is set from the first visit, even with no answer. It carries a randomly drawn identifier that tells new visitors from returning ones and links the campaigns through which the same visitor arrived. As long as the visitor has chosen nothing, their consent counts as “no”. The cookie lasts 13 months from the first visit: a new visit or a new choice does not extend it.
Twenty-five months after the first visit, your site erases this identifier from your analytics. It keeps anonymous visits: a country, a device, pages and their dates.
Offer the objection to audience measurement
The Audience measurement objection block collects a visitor’s refusal to be counted. A visitor who turns it on disappears from your analytics. Without this block, your visitors cannot object to the measurement.
- Open the page that explains your use of cookies, for example your privacy policy.
- Insert a Cookie consent manager block.
- In this block, insert Audience measurement objection.
- Optional: write its label. Left empty, it displays Object to anonymous audience measurement.
- Save the page.
The objection and the refusal of cookies stay independent: rejecting cookies does not remove the visitor from your analytics. Objecting to the measurement changes nothing about their other choice.
Respect the Global Privacy Control signal
Global Privacy Control is a browser setting by which the visitor asks that the data of their visit be neither sold nor shared. Brave and DuckDuckGo send it by default and Firefox offers it. Your site respects it, whether or not you place the block: no advertising tag fires, even after Accept all. Your analytics stay on your site.
Your site declares it at the address /.well-known/gpc.json, which some audit tools read.
The Global Privacy Control notice block announces it to the visitor concerned. Left empty, it displays Your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, and we honor it. in the visitor’s language. Other visitors see nothing. In the editor, the sentence stays visible so that you can style it.
Read your visitors’ answers
Each answer to the banner is a submission of the Cookie banner form.
- In the Forms menu, click Cookie banner in the list of forms.
- Read the Answer breakdown card: the share of visitors who chose Accept all, Reject all, a Detailed choice or Object to anonymous audience measurement.
- Optional: read the list of submissions. The Visitor choice column gives each answer, with its channel, its page and its country.
Choices are counted without being decrypted.
List your cookies in your policy
The Cookie table block lists in a legal document each cookie a visitor can receive, what it is for and how long it lasts. It updates by itself when the site sets a new cookie. Show the cookie table explains how to place it.