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In the past few months, at least three people have emailed me to say that they've not been able to add items to their basket. It was because they had cookies disabled.
This makes me wonder how many people that have cookies disabled have visited my site and simply left, instead of emailing me.
I am trying to weigh up whether it is worth redesigning my site so that it does not use cookies.
I guess maybe I could add a check to my site that reads the cookie back once it's written it. If it finds that it is not there, it could redirect to a page explaining that cookies are required.
Maybe I'll keep a check of how many people go to this page, then I can answer my own question!
>>Surfing the net would be quite annoying without allowing cookies in
I dunno, most cookies I see have no benefit to me whatsoever so I get on fine without them ;)
I'm not sure why people would want to disallow cookies. Non-techies aren't going to know how to turn them off (or even know what they are) and techies are going to realise that most sites are going to need them!
Most sites don't need cookies, and I can allow just the ones that do. Plus as a techy I can tell if a site is not working because cookies have been blocked ;)
For non-techies the reasons range from paranoid 'security' software to browser settings (like IE's privacy stuff).
And, weren't cookies the sky-is-falling end-of-security-on-the-Web about 4 or 5 years ago? I think the cookies issue came up in government hearings (at least in the US), magazine articles, newspaper articles, talk radio shows, etc. The non-techie that is rather lax about virus protection and firewalls may be fanatical about blocking cookies simply because of inaccurate commentary they heard or read years ago. And barely remember the real reasons for blocking now.
CookieCentral.com has a nice nontechie-friendly FAQ about cookies. I've been directing users there for any additional cookie questions. In addition to browser settings, firewalls/proxy servers, and cookie-blocking software, they also mention the website itself as a potential problem. It's always possible that a site isn't handling cookies properly. It's worth checking on if users encounter lots of problems w/ cookies.
Most sites don't need cookies, and I can allow just the ones that do. Plus as a techy I can tell if a site is not working because cookies have been blocked
cookies are relatively harmless. it,s all the other stuff that's more worrisome, like spyware,spam, 'web bugs' and malicious scripts that burrow into your browser cache so they can track your every move.
My guess is that the percentage of all web users that would even know what a cookie was would be minute, let alone the sub-set that disables them!
Here's my guesstimate: 0.075%
Though it may include a large part of some sites' target audience. Depends what services you are offering.
Total visitors: the percentage who block or ignore cookies is likely to be very large.
As far as I know, no spiders use cookies. So the spiders see the site the same as a cookie-blocking user would.
Which is a good reason to ensure that the site works fully and rationally without cookies. Assuming the site wants to be in search engines, of course.
