Complying with privacy laws and regulations is hard — Merchant’s Cookie Banner module helps you meet the legal requirements.
It adds a customizable cookie banner to your website that links to your Privacy Policy and lets your customers know about your privacy and data collection rules. They give their consent by clicking an opt-in button shown on top of the cookie banner.
Once a user clicks the button, Merchant sets a cookie in their browser that serves as proof that they accepted your Privacy Policy. The cookie banner will disappear from your website for the duration of the cookie for the respective user. Once that period is over, the user’s browser will delete the cookie, the cookie banner will re-appear on your website, and the user will have to accept it again.
In the screenshot below, you can see an example of Merchant’s Cookie Banner module on the frontend of a WooCommerce store:
Let’s see how you can set up Merchant’s Cookie Banner module and meet the requirements of various privacy laws around the world.
1. Create a Privacy Policy Page
Before enabling the Cookie Banner module, you need to create a Privacy Policy page (technically, you could show the banner without linking to a privacy policy, but then your store won’t comply with most of the privacy regulations).
The good news is that WordPress takes privacy fairly seriously and includes a couple of default privacy settings and guidelines.
First, it comes with a default Privacy Policy draft that you can edit and publish — you can find it on the Pages > All Pages admin screen:
Second, it has a dedicated Privacy area that you can reach from the Settings > Privacy menu in the left sidebar:
As we mentioned above, getting privacy right is hard. Here, in the Policy Guide tab, you can get some information about the cookies WordPress and WooCommerce use. This privacy guide can help you write an accurate Privacy Policy.
2. Save Your Privacy Policy Page in WordPress (optional)
Note that this step is not necessary if you want to use Merchant’s Cookie Banner module — it will also work without it (it just needs the URL of your Privacy Policy page). However, saving your Privacy Policy page to your database can help you comply with different privacy regulations, so we’ll briefly discuss it.
Once you created and published your Privacy Policy page, click the ‘Change your Privacy Policy page’ dropdown, select the page from the available options, then click the ‘Use This Page’ button:
Now, WordPress has saved the page as your default privacy policy to your database.
It will also link to it from the login page of your website:
You can also link to your Privacy Policy from other areas of your WordPress site — for example, you can add it to your footer menu from the Appearance > Menus admin page.
3. Open the Cookie Banner Module
Once your Privacy Policy page is set up, open your Merchant dashboard by clicking the Merchant menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area.
Under the Protect Store heading, click the Cookie Banner module to open its settings page:
4. Configure the Module’s Settings
On the module’s admin page, find the Settings section, and configure the settings. You get access to the following options:
- Theme – Here, you can choose whether you want to show a floating or fixed cookie banner.
- Bar text – This is the text that Merchant will show on the cookie banner (default text: ‘🍪 We’re using cookies to give you the best experience on our site.’).
- Privacy policy text – This is the text of the link that will take your users to your Privacy Policy page (default text: ‘Learn More’).
- Privacy policy URL – Here, you need to insert the URL of your Privacy Policy page that you created in the first step.
- Button text – This is the label that Merchant will show on the button that users need to click to accept your Privacy Policy (default text: ‘I Understand’).
- Cookie duration (days) – This is the duration of the cookie Merchant sets in your user’s browser. Once they click the button, the cookie banner will disappear for this duration from your website (e.g. if you set it to 365 days, the banner will re-appear for that user after 365 days).
- Show close ‘x’ button – Here, you can show or hide the close button shown in the top-right corner of the cookie banner.
Once all the settings are configured, click the Save button in the top-right corner of the page.
5. Customize the Design of Your Cookie Banner
Merchant also allows you to customize the style of your cookie banner. You can find the Style section under the Settings section on the module’s admin page.
You get access to the following options:
- Modal height – This is the height of the cookie banner in pixels.
- Modal background color – You can use a color picker to change the background color of the cookie banner.
- Text color – Here, you can change the color of the text shown on the cookie banner.
- Link color – This is the text color of the link that takes users to your Privacy Policy page.
- Button background color – Here, you can change the background color of the consent button.
- Button text color – This is where you can customize the text color of the consent button.
If you are happy with the style of your cookie banner, click the Save button in the top-right corner of the page.
6. Enable the Cookie Banner Module
Finally, you need to activate the module. To do so, click the Enable button at the top of the page:
