Companies complying with the new cookie law are likely to see a dramatic fall in traffic, if the experiences of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) are anything to go by, after its site witnessed an 89% fall in traffic since introducing the approval tool.
The ICO was one of the first sites to install a cookie consent system when the law came into force, with most businesses given a year’s grace in which to prepare for the law before any enforcement action will be taken.
But data released under a Freedom of Information request, made by Vicky Brock from Highland Business Research, underlines the impact the change in law will have for online businesses in the UK and Europe.
Two days before the law came into force the site had 10,099 and 9,841 unique visitors. Once consent was required for visitors to the site to be tracked, though, the numbers slumped.
On May 26, the ICO site recorded just 1,281 visitors and on May 27 that dropped to 1,138. Overall, the average figure for the 20 days prior to the law change and the 20 days after was an 89 per cent loss in measured visitor data.
The figures will make worrying reading for firms that need analytics data to secure advertising or focus marketing campaigns.
However, there could be other factors at work. The fact that it is the ICO web site, and not a major consumer site, means the figures may be distorted. It could also have had a huge increase in traffic due to the looming new law, and the latest figures could be just a return to “normal” traffic.
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