Cookies
Your store website uses cookies to work and function effectively. As a merchant, you should be aware of what cookies are and how they are used on your store website. This article provides an overview of cookies and the most common questions on them.
Note that depending on your store jurisdiction and target customer regions, you may be obligated to provide detailed information about cookies usage on your store website and ask for consent to use them. Unistore helps you with that as, by default, your store website has a cookie consent banner and a cookie policy page. You still may want to consult with your local authorities or a lawyer if there are additional requirements you need to meet.
What are cookies
Cookies are small pieces of data that Unistore puts on customers' devices when they open your store website in the browser. Generally, Unistore uses cookies to store their preferences and other settings. For example, a cookie can be used to remember a customer's preferred language or the products a customer added to the cart.
While cookies are used to recognize and remember a specific customer on your store website, they do not contain any personally identifiable information. A cookie typically contains a record of the website that issued it, a cookie name, an expiration date, and a value which is often a randomly generated unique number.
Cookies on your store website can be essential or optional.
How cookies work
When a customer visits your store website for the first time, Unistore sends them the essential cookies to save on the customer's device. This happens regardless of the theme you use for your store website.
Additionally, your store website displays a banner asking for customer consent to use optional cookies. If a customer gives permission to use optional cookies, Unistore sends them to the customer's device as well. This also happens regardless of the store's active theme. If the customer does not give permission or ignores the banner, they do not receive optional cookies.
After the customer device saves the received cookies, they are used when the customer opens a page on your store website or performs an action such as adding a product to the cart or editing their account.
If a customer uses incognito mode, they still receive both essential and optional (if they agree) cookies. A customer therefore can normally interact with your store website. However, the received cookies in this case are stored and used only while the the customer keeps their browser open. Next time they open the browser and visit your store website the cookies will be set from scratch.
When a cookie expires it is no longer used. The customer device ignores expired cookie and gets a new identical one from Unistore when it is needed. Usually, browsers automatically delete expired cookies.
Note that cookies are stored on a customer device used to visit your store website. If a customer visits your store website on another device, your store website treats them as a newcomer, so Unistore sends cookies to them again.
Essential cookies
Essential cookies are first-party cookies from Unistore that ensure your store website works correctly and provides a good user experience. Essential cookies do not need customer consent to be used, so all your customers get essential cookies installed on their devices.
There is no option to disable any essential cookie from Unistore for your store website.
Your store has a default policy page with the essential cookies table and explanations for your customers.
Optional cookies
Optional cookies are not needed for the correct functioning of your store website. They are often third-party files used for analytical and advertising purposes. Some countries have laws that demand to ask explicitly a customer's consent to use optional cookies. All Unistore and partner themes come with a banner for cookie usage consent.
If you connect an integration with your store, some optional cookies from the integrated service might be sent to your customers.
The default policy page with Cookie Policy includes all optional cookies from all possible integrations.
What affects cookies
The list of cookies that your store website uses can change if you:
- Connect or disconnect an integration with your store
- Add a script with a custom cookie into the code of your store active theme or remove previously added such script
The cookie usage is also tied to your store active domain. If you change a store active domain for a new domain, all cookies from the previous domain will become obsolete, and the new corresponding cookies will be set for a new store domain. For example, the previous authorization cookies will not work, your customers will have to log again into your store.
Changing the code file responsible for the cookie consent banner can also affect the cookies on your store website. In Unistore themes, Optimum and Momentum, the code for the cookie consent banners is located in the files:
assets/cookie-popup.css(contains CSS styles for the cookie consent banner)assets/cookie-popup.js(contains JavaScript code to process the customer's choice on the cookie consent banner)snippets/cookie-popup.liquid(contains Liquid and HTML code for the cookie consent banner)
If you delete or change significantly the code responsible for the cookie consent banner, your store website may not display the cookie consent banner. As a result, your customers cannot allow or disallow using the optional cookies, and Unistore treats this as they declined optional cookies usage. If you have connected integrations, this may lead to incorrect service functioning on your store website.
If you accidentally deleted or modified the code responsible for the cookie consent banner, we recommend you add your active theme again in Marketplace and switch to the new theme copy in Library.
Can I add custom cookie
You can add a script to set a custom cookie using the Code editor. In this case, your cookie will be treated as an essential one, so all customers visiting your store website will get it.
Remember to include the description of your cookie on the policy page with Cookie Policy.