About cookies
Most websites use 'cookies' - they're tiny text files which your web browser will store in order to give websites the ability to remember and improve. They help us to give you a better experience on our website. Cookie files come with an expiration date; some last only as long as your sesson, or a specified number of hours or days, and some are built to last months or even years. However, if you clear your cookies in your current web browser, the files will be deleted regardless of their expiration date. Please read 'Managing cookies' below if you would like to learn more about this.
How to manage Cookies
By default essential Cookies are opt in and for marketing and analytical cookies visitors will chose to opt in should they wish. To manage your own cookie preferences please click here. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Personal data
Cookies do not contain personal information, they are just a unique string of letters and numbers. Further information on how we protect your privacy, and when and how we use your personal data, can be found in our Privacy Policy at www.rspb.org.uk/privacypolicy.
What cookies does RSPB Shop use, and why?
1) Essential cookies
Essential cookies are required because they ensure we can provide the functionality expected on our website. For example, they enable you to add items to a basket, use the checkout, log in if you're an existing customer (and remain logged in as you browse our products) and other familiar online-shopping functionality. A cookie will also remember what your cookie preferences are so that you don't have to repeatedly tell your browser your preferences.
2) Analytics cookies
We use third-party software to help us monitor how you experience our website. These cookies do not contain any personal data. Primarily we use Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Hotjar as tools, which enable us to collect anonymous stats - it helps us improve the website if we know which pages are most and least popular, for example, or how many pages are viewed on a smartphone rather than on a larger screen. Some of the analytics cookie names in use include: ajs_anonymous_id, _hjid and _gcl_au.
3) Marketing cookies
We promote RSPB Shop and our products in a variety of ways on the Internet. Sometimes you may see a product link in a Google search result, or an advert on a social media website, or you may belong to an online club that we're working with to provide a special offer and click through to us from there. When you arrive on our website from one of these sorts of promoted messages, we can use a cookie file to track that someone clicked through and whether or not this person purchased anything from us. If you opt-in to marketing cookies, we can measure how cost-effective our advertising is.
We also sometimes run campaigns with third parties where we show adverts for RSPB Shop. Marketing cookies can help you see more relevant adverts, but also help ensure you don't see the same advert/company all the time as well as enable RSPB to measure and improve its online advertising and, therefore, reduce its marketing costs.
Marketing cookies: Cookies to track commissioned sales from affiliates
If you arrive here from an affiliate link and have opted-in to marketing cookies your browser should store a cookie to reference that, for example a cookie called 'visitorFromAffiliates'. Such cookies are necessary for the provision of service where the affiliate is a cashback website enabling users to receive voucher code discounts and/or cashback on purchases made on the RSPB Shop website. These cookies are also necessary to allow affiliate marketing to work as they track transactions so commission can be paid to affiliates for sales initiating on their websites.
Marketing cookies: First and third-party advertising cookies
When an individual clicks or responds to an RSPB online advert or email, a cookie is placed on the user’s computer. These cookies are used to track when and where users have viewed or clicked on adverts, to apply frequency caps, ensure that users see relevant adverts (based on information about their visit to our website and other websites) and to track actions or sales that have taken place. As explained above, we run a range of advertising campaigns to promote RSPB Shop. Here are example advertising cookies you may see if you inspected your cookies storage folder (and have opted-in to Marketing cookies):
How to contact us in case of any questions
Please address requests and questions about our Cookies or Privacy Policy to our Data Protection Officer at The RSPB, The Lodge, Potton Road, Sandy, Bedfordshire SG19 2DL, or email dpofficer@rspb.org.uk.