Does your website need a cookie banner?

On almost every website today, the first thing a visitor sees is a box about cookies. Most business owners add one because “everybody does”, not because they know why it is there. The result is often the worst of both worlds: the banner gets in the visitor’s way in the very first second, yet solves nothing legally — because the tracking on the page starts before the person has clicked anything at all.

Not all cookies are the same

A cookie is a small file a website leaves in the visitor’s browser in order to remember something. In itself it is neither good nor bad — everything depends on what exactly it remembers and who that information reaches.

Some cookies are technically necessary for the site. They keep a logged-in user in their session, remember the chosen language, hold the items in a shopping cart and protect the contact form from automated spam. Without them the site simply wouldn’t work the way a visitor expects.

Other cookies aren’t needed by your site — they are needed by someone else. Analytics tools, advertising pixels, remarketing, embedded videos and external widgets follow what a person does, and often hand that data to companies outside your website. This second group is what the whole consent question is actually about.

What the law actually asks for

In Europe this area is governed by two connected sets of rules: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the so-called ePrivacy directive, which in Latvia is implemented through national legislation. A few practical points follow from them.

Consent has to come before, not after. If a site loads analytics or an advertising pixel the moment a visitor opens it, the consent button no longer changes anything — the data has already left.

Consent has to be a real choice. That means refusing must be just as easy as agreeing, and the site has to work even when someone does refuse.

And the choice has to be changeable. Consent isn’t forever — a visitor has to be able to withdraw it later, and the business has to be able to show what was agreed to and when.

We are not lawyers and we don’t give legal advice. But the technical side — what actually loads on your site, when it happens, and whether it happens before consent — is exactly our job.

This is the part nobody tends to mention. If a site only uses technically necessary cookies, no consent banner is needed at all.

In practice that covers more websites than you might think. A starter site with a description of your services and a contact form, with no analytics, no Meta pixel, no embedded YouTube videos and no chat widget, can run perfectly well without any banner. The visitor sees the content straight away, the page loads faster, and there is nothing to ask permission for.

When it is required

A banner becomes necessary the moment something appears on the site that follows a person around or passes their data on. Most often that means visitor analytics tools, advertising and remarketing pixels, embedded videos and maps, chat widgets, and the various external scripts that arrive on a site gradually over the years.

The important thing here is that this list tends to grow unnoticed. A site that genuinely had none of it two years ago can be in a completely different situation today — because at some point a campaign, a widget or a new tool was added that nobody remembers any more.

Where most banners fall short

Usually the problem isn’t that a banner is missing. The problem is that it’s there, but doesn’t do what it’s meant to.

Often the scripts load regardless of what the visitor clicks — the banner is just decoration on top. Sometimes there is only one option, “I agree”, with no real way to refuse. There are cookie policies copied from another website, describing tools this site has never had. And almost always the banner itself is a third-party script that slows the site down and takes up more of the first screen than the company’s actual offer.

How we handle it

On the sites we build we start with the question that usually gets skipped: does this site need that banner at all. Often the answer is no — and then the best solution is a clean, fast page with no unnecessary scripts. Where tracking genuinely is needed, we set it up so that consent works properly and the site’s speed doesn’t suffer for it.

For existing sites we do the same as part of our maintenance and support service — we review what currently loads on the site and put it in order along with the rest of the technical side.

If you’re not sure where your site stands, or whether that banner belongs there at all — book a consultation. We’ll look at what is happening on your site, explain it in plain language, and propose a solution for your particular case.