Consent and privacy on your site

Needlr follows your cookie banner: a visitor who says no isn't stored, sent or tested. And it never keeps names, emails or IP addresses.

Needlr follows your site's cookie banner. When a visitor says no, Needlr leaves them alone. For everyone else, it keeps as little as it can: no names, no emails, no IP addresses.

Think of a shop counter

A shop counts how many people come in and how many buy something. It doesn't need anyone's name for that. And if someone says “please don't count me”, the shop simply doesn't.

How Needlr follows your banner

Most cookie banners can pass the visitor's choice to Tag Manager with Google Consent Mode. Needlr reads the analytics part of that choice on every page.

• The visitor says no: Needlr stores nothing on their device and sends nothing. They aren't in any test, and they see your site as it is.
• They say yes later: Needlr starts from that moment.
• They take their yes back: Needlr forgets them. Their random ID and their versions are wiped from their browser.
• Your site doesn't use Consent Mode: Tag Manager treats that as a yes, so Needlr runs for every visitor. If your visitors must agree first, turn on Consent Mode in your cookie banner.
• Winners you shipped to everyone still show to visitors who said no. They're part of your site now: no ID, nothing stored, nothing counted (shipped changes).

What Needlr stores

In the visitor's own browser, and only after a yes:

• A random visitor ID. Just random letters and numbers, not a name or an email. It's kept for about 13 months.
• Which version they got in each test, so they see the same one every time (how).
• The last day they visited, so a visit is counted once a day.

On Needlr's servers:

• Events. Each one has the random visitor ID, the page and the KPI. No names, no emails, no IP addresses.
• Raw events are deleted after 90 days.
• Daily counts are kept for 13 months, with no visitor IDs. That's how you can still measure a release from months ago (past release).
• Everything stays on servers in Germany (security).

What it means for your results

Visitors who say no aren't counted, in version A and version B alike. So the comparison stays fair. But fewer visitors are measured, so a test can take longer (why tests take time). They don't count toward your measured visitors either.

Signed-in users

For an adoption check, your developer can tell Needlr who's signed in. Use your own internal user ID for that, never an email address.

Common mistakes

• No Consent Mode on a site that needs it. Without it, Tag Manager treats every visitor as a yes. Ask whoever runs your cookie banner to turn on Google Consent Mode.
• Expecting every visitor to be counted. Only visitors who said yes are measured. If many say no, tests take longer.
• Sending email addresses as user IDs. Needlr doesn't need them. Use your own internal ID.

Words to know

Google Consent Mode

Google's way for a cookie banner to tell Tag Manager what a visitor agreed to.

Visitor ID

Random letters and numbers in the visitor's browser. It keeps their version the same, without saying who they are.

Raw event

One thing one visitor did, like a page view or a click on your KPI.

Daily count

How many visitors and KPI hits there were on one day, with no IDs.