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Privacy 101
The ultimate guide to consent banner formats
Privacy 101
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The ultimate guide to consent banner formats

Published  

9/12/2023

6
min read

Published  

September 12, 2023

by 

Thierry Maout

10 min read
Summary

Since 2018 and the advent of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), consent has been established as the most common legal basis for online data collection. We should know, as we provide a leading Consent Management Platform (CMP) and help thousands of organizations worldwide comply with data privacy regulations.

But as more regulations are introduced, each with its own intricacies and specificities, it can be hard to determine what a compliant consent banner looks like. If your organization collects consent in various countries, the waters get even muddier: What consent banner should you implement? What buttons should it feature? How many layers of information should it contain?

In this article, we review the various types of consent banners and where they apply and take a quick look at what you should avoid when creating yours (dark patterns) before introducing how you can build it with Didomi.

Note: To learn more about consent banner position, the difference between pop-in and sticky banners, the performance of subscription cookie walls, and access proprietary data we collected from the thousands of websites Didomi is implemented on, check out our 2024 data privacy consent benchmark:

Didomi - 2024 benchmark download-1

 

What are dark patterns?

When talking about consent banner best practices, it's important to highlight best practices but also what you should avoid doing. Dark patterns are a type of deceiving design element that is looking to manipulate users into making certain decisions online.

In the infancy of the GDPR, unknowing (or sometimes unscrupulous) organizations notoriously used design tricks in their consent banners to influence users into providing consent for data collection, which we strongly recommend against.

A mockup of 4 consent banners illustrating four types of dark patterns: manipulative buttons, hidden choices, confusing banner text, and influencing design.

 

Here are 4 things to avoid when creating your consent banner:

  1. Manipulative buttons: Using specific wording in the choices to guilt-trip users into making a decision over another (e.g., “I’m happy to accept”)
  2. Hidden choices: Influencing users by making one or several of the choices harder to see (e.g., different font or color to blend one of the choices in the banner)
  3. Confusing banner text: Offering a description that doesn’t accurately describe what the consent collection entails (e.g., “Data collection is boring, don’t worry, we won’t really use your data”)
  4. Influencing design: Misleading users with the design of the banner itself (e.g., visual elements that clearly push the user to go towards one of the options)

Interested to learn more about dark patterns? Read our article on the topic:

The author
Thierry Maout
Lead content manager at Didomi.
Managing content at Didomi. I love reading, writing, and learning about data privacy, technology, culture, and education.
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