Do you need a cookie banner for analytics?

Cookie banners are the part of running a website nobody enjoys. They get in the way, plenty of visitors decline them, and the ones who click through are a little annoyed before they’ve seen anything.

So it’s a fair question: do you need one just to count your visitors?

What we can do is explain what analytics actually stores, what odo stores in each of its modes, and what you give up by storing nothing. You’ll need to know that part either way.

Why banners exist

In some parts of the world, privacy rules pay close attention to two things: storing or reading information on a visitor’s device, and handling personal data. A cookie holding an id that recognizes someone each time they come back is the textbook example of the first, and one reason consent banners became so common.

So the useful question isn’t just “does my analytics use cookies?” It’s “what does it store, why, and who else gets to see it?”

What analytics usually stores

Most analytics tools recognize returning visitors by keeping an id in their browser, usually in a cookie. That id is how a tool knows Monday’s visitor and Thursday’s visitor are the same person, and how a sale today can be connected to the visit last week that started it.

Some tools also load scripts from other companies, or share what they collect. That’s a separate question from the cookie, and often the bigger one. Check what every script on your site does, not just the analytics.

What odo stores

odo has two modes, and you choose one for each website.

Standard mode. odo’s script keeps one id, called odo_vid. It’s a first-party cookie on your own domain, with a copy in the browser’s local storage, lasting a year from the visitor’s latest visit. odo uses it to recognize returning visitors, to keep each visitor on the same version of an A/B test, and to hand the id to your checkout so a sale can be traced to the visit that brought it. No third parties are involved. Visitors whose browser sends Global Privacy Control don’t get an id at all: odo treats them as cookieless.

Cookieless mode. Nothing is stored in the visitor’s browser. Instead, odo recognizes a visitor within a single day by a hash of your website, their IP address and their browser, mixed with a secret that’s replaced every day and then forgotten. The hash can’t be turned back into an address, and it can’t link one day’s visits to the next. IP addresses themselves aren’t kept.

In both modes, odo never keeps what anyone types into a form. Clicks and forms are recorded by what a button or field says about itself, never by what someone entered. You can wrap any part of a page in data-odo-ignore so nothing inside it is read, narrow what’s recorded with data-capture on the script tag, or switch clicks, forms and errors off for the website altogether.

What you give up by going cookieless

Cookieless mode is built for sites that want analytics without a consent banner. The trade-offs are real, so know them before you switch.

• Returning visitors are only recognized within a day. Someone who visits on Monday and again on Friday counts as two people.
• Sales can’t be traced to visits through your payment platform. There’s no id to hand to checkout, so odo can’t tell which post or page a payment came from. If that’s the reason you want analytics, read which post made the sale before you decide.
• A/B tests don’t run. Experiments need a lasting id to keep each visitor on one version, so on a cookieless site everyone sees the first version and nothing is recorded. More in A/B test your headline.

Everything else works: visitors, pages, sources and channels, countries, devices, goals, funnels and the live view. And your income from connected platforms counts exactly the same, because that comes from the platforms, not from your website.

How to switch a site to cookieless

1. In odo, open the website’s settings and turn on Cookieless.
2. Add data-cookieless to odo’s script tag on your site, so the script itself never stores an id:

<script defer src="https://odo.gg/js/odo.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" data-cookieless></script>

You can switch back later. Visits counted while the site was cookieless stay counted that way.

Choosing

There’s no single right answer. A rough way to think about it:

• If knowing which post, video or page made each sale is the main reason you want analytics, standard mode gives you that. Talk to whoever advises you about what consent it needs where you operate.
• If you mostly want to see visitors, pages and sources, and you’d rather not show a banner for them, cookieless mode covers that.

Whichever you pick, it’s per website and you can change it. Every plan includes both modes: see pricing.

And once more: this describes how odo works. It isn’t legal advice about what your site needs.