Due to the correct application of the cookie law, holiday site Sunweb sees measurable site traffic decrease by thirty percent. However, the company does not notice significant differences in revenue figures.
This is evident from reports from Sundio Group which Emerce had access to. Marketing manager Jonas de Groot: “We are the first in the travel industry to implement the opt-in for cookies this way and are receiving many questions about it. Therefore, we are sharing the results.” The outcome is good news for e-commerce companies that have invested a lot in a refined, qualitative marketing channel. The purchasing customer is not always visible, but does not change their behavior. At least, consumer behavior does change, but at first glance, this is not detrimental to the webshop. It seems that Sunweb.nl and its three subdomains (sun, winter, and car holidays) mainly miss low-quality traffic. A little more than a week ago, Sunweb decided to remove all third-party cookies from its site. Only the homepage Sunweb.nl has a Google Analytics cookie. This should provide material for comparison against traffic that directly enters the subdomains.
The detailed report shows that, depending on the subdomain, sixty to seventy percent of visitors directly accept that cookies are being placed (first and third). The other part of the visit first wants to be informed about what cookies are, what they do, and what the visitor might get out of them. Almost all visitors also choose full opt-in at that point. One percent opts for the coldest cookie: the functional.
Sabine de Vos, web analyst of Sunweb, states: “99 percent of the people who choose, choose the highest opt-in level. The biggest learning is that consumers have no idea what cookies are and do, or they don't care.”
The accompanying text with the report is not just hallelujah. Although the implementation of the opt-in process brings good results, according to the marketing department, it is still not customer-friendly enough. The choice process will be tightened over the coming weeks.
Other remarkable figures: the bounce rate decreases by a quarter, the conversion rate and time on site increase, and the number of pages per visit has also grown. Sunweb can translate that to: the quality and willingness to buy of visitors has gone up. Random passersby without any intent to orient or purchase are startled by the mandatory cookie choice and leave immediately.
Another remarkable fact: traffic from third-party sources (such as display, search, AWords, and email) has decreased by twenty to fifty percent. However, the conversion from these same sources has increased by between forty and seventy percent.
