MBA2160 Q&A Wednesday: Do I have to have annoying cookies pop up on my site?

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Arm NBA show helping you and your business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question is from Fred and Fred asks, hey Omar, I have a business that sells graphic design services so I'm a little bit of a stickler when it comes to design of my website. So my question to you is do I need to have those annoying cookies permission pop ups on my website? I see them all over the Internet. They're ugly and they create a horrible experience for the visitor. Is there any way around this or do I have to have this on my site? Thanks so much for your help. I love the podcast. Fred. Fred, thank you so much for the question. It's an interesting one and I got good news for you. You don't need to have that annoying pop up about the cookies if your website is not putting cookies or tracking cookies of your visitors, and I'll explain what that all means and what are some alternatives and why you want to use cookies on your website in the first place. We get into all of that as well as what my recommendation is for somebody like Fred who has a graphic design website or a brochure website for services, or even if you have a product website or a course website that sells courses, or a software website, no matter what your business is, I'll tell you what I think you should consider when it comes to your cookies and these pop ups on your site. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Listen, I agree with Fred, who asked today's Q and A Wednesday's question. Those cookie pop ups are really annoying. It's really ruined the experience for many of us who go to different kinds of websites. You want to close them, you got to agree to them. It's indeed very annoying. Let me start off by explaining why these popups exist. What are cookies in the first place and why would you have this pop up or choose not to have one of these popups on your site? So most sites that have this popup, they're doing this so that the visitor is aware that their activity on this website is being tracked. It's basically saying, hey, we are using cookies to track your activity on this website. Heads up. Depending on where you are in the world or where your business serves, this might be required by law. So to be in the clear. Most websites that do use cookies to track people's activity will have this pop up where you agree or you understand or you close it out, whatever it might be. So how do you know if your site is using cookies or not? And what is cookies in the first place? Well, cookies is a way for you to track the activity of the visitor. Basically, you're dropping some sort of tracking device or code so that you know how to identify this user, this visitor to your site. Why would you Want to do this? Well, it's so that you could track conversions. You can run ads based on this person or people like this person. This is so you can track the analytics and them coming back to your site. There's a lot of marketing reasons why people use cookies on sites. The most common one is tracking their activity just from an analytics point of view, using a tool like Google Analytics. Google Analytics uses cookies, so it identifies the user, their location, who they are, their IP address, and all that jazz. Another good example of this is a Facebook pixel. Facebook pixels use cookies. If anybody's running Facebook or Instagram ads for their business, they're gonna put a line of code on their website which will allow to use cookies to track that visitor. Have you ever gone on Facebook and seen an ad for a website or a product of a website that you just visited recently? Well, that's cookies in action. You went on this website, you checked out the product. Those I now identified you, and your device knows your activity on the website. So the products that you viewed and all that kind of stuff and then can serve you an ad somewhere else, like Facebook on what you saw on the website. I know that sounds kind of magical, but. Or even creepy that they can serve you specific ads based on your actions on a completely different website like Facebook or Instagram. But that's how sophisticated marketing has become Online Cookies is also used for tracking affiliate commissions and all kinds of stuff. So if you're looking to run any kind of digital ads based on the activity of the user on your website, you're gonna use cookies. But again, like I said, the most common example is people using Google Analytics. It's an analytics tool that's used by Google. It's free, and that's why people use it all the time. But it uses cookies to do its thing. Now, do you have to do this? Do you have to leverage and use cookies on your site? No, you don't. If you don't want to run digital ads, and if you don't want to track conversions, you can actually run ads on Facebook, but not track any conversions. So you don't really know how the ad is performing. You can basically use it as like a billboard system, then you don't need to put the code on your site, and you won't be using cookies. If you don't want to use Google Analytics to track people's activity and have analytics for your website and website visitors, you don't need to use it. There are other alternatives. One of my favorite alternatives is Fathom Analytics. They do it without cookies where you can have analytics about your website, but it's generic information about the users, no detailed information. So cookies is not needed. And in this case you don't need the pop up because you're not using cookies. So if you're like Fred who's running a service based business and you're not running digital ads and you're not optimizing for conversions, you really don't need to utilize cookies and you don't really need to have this pop up. You can use something like Fathom analytics so you can have analytics on your website and then you can go down that route. Now if you want to get more sophisticated with digital ads and track conversions and do retargeting and all kinds of fancy stuff, it's going to be very hard, pretty much impossible to do it without having cookies. And then of course you'll have to have that cookies banner or cookies pop up. I know personally some entrepreneurs that have went totally 0 cookies and have not put any tracking pixels on their website, they don't have this pop up and it's just kind of part of their brand. It's a statement, hey, we don't want to track your activity. We really value privacy and this is kind of the thing that we're doing and we'll just manage without having all that sophisticating marketing tools and strategies. Now some businesses like software businesses, e commerce businesses, it's incredibly hard to run an efficient business without some way to track people with cookies and running ads based on it. You got to have acquisition channels, you have to have a way to be able to tap into customers via paid marketing. You got to have a way to have some conversion metrics and this is where the cookies come in. If you're running Google Ads, you're going to need to use something like Google Analytics so that you can be able to track conversions on your ads on Google. That's why when I say SaaS companies or E commerce business companies, they're selling actual products and need new customers constantly to grow. Yes, it could be a long slog of word of mouth and free advertising and social media and content marketing and you can go down that route, but you're making things a lot harder with out any paid marketing channels. The same thing goes with digital products like courses and coaching. Yes, you can grow your email list with content and be able to market that email list and do not use cookies at all. I've seen successful businesses do it, but it's not the easiest path because when you use cookies to track. You can know who these people are and you can find people just like them. Especially when you find somebody who buys. When you see someone actually convert into a buyer, then you have a profile on this person. You can say, find me more people like this so you can maximize your ad spend dollars.

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So on today's Q and A Wednesday, Fred asks, do I have to have those annoying pop ups about the cookies on my website? And my answer is no, you don't have to, but know that you are sacrificing some functionality, some ability to market more efficiently and more cost effectively. If you're not sure if you are using cookies, ask the person that put your website together. Your web developer, the person that designed it or coded it. You can even ask your website hosting provider. They can take a look at your website and tell you. And in that case, if you do put the pop up so you're in the up and up and you're being transparent and if you're not, you don't need it until you do. Now, if you have found yourself in a situation where you're like, I have to use cookies, I'm running paid ads. I'm using Google Analytics, I'm tracking my users so I can be able to be more efficient with my marketing. It's not all doom and gloom. People are getting used to these pop ups. They are expecting to see it. They know that cookies are part of the game. They fully understand it. But it's less of an annoying thing now because it's become so prevalent and so ubiquitous. So in my opinion, if you are running paid ads and you're kind of on the fence, should I use this cookie technology? Do I have to have this pop up or should I stop doing paid ads? If the paid ads are working for your business, they're giving you conversions or getting you new customers, the health of your business is actually more important. In this case, yes, it's a minor inconvenience for the visitor. It's not the prettiest thing, but it's business and customers and revenue and cash flow is the oxygen of your business. Let your business breathe and be transparent with your visitor. Put the pop up and just be at peace with that. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. Thanks Fred for your question here on today's Q&A Wednesday. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at Omar100- MBA net and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you like the podcast if you want to show love, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. If you're listening or using Apple Podcasts, go ahead and leave us a review. You enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday where we give a life membership to one of our programs. Listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this Sometimes in business we don't always get what we want. I would love not to use that cookies pop up on my own websites, but we're actually using the technology to better serve our customers. I rather be able to market to people actually are good fit for my products and services rather than trying to market to everybody and then they buy and they're upset and they're not happy with the the product or service because it's not what they expected. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your product or service being bad, it just has to do with it being a bad fit. So this allows us to actually serve our customers better and I see it in that perspective. Hopefully that perspective helps you in some way. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Until then, take care.

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