Cookies

We use cookies across our websites to improve their performance and enhance your user experience. This page explains how we use cookies.

What is a Cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone browser from a website and is stored on your device. 

Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, which the site can then access when you visit it again to track online traffic flows, for example. 

Why are Cookies used?

Most websites will use cookies in order to improve the user experience by enabling the website to ‘remember’ the user, either for the duration of the visit or for repeat visits.

Cookies do lots of different jobs, such as:

  • Remembering what items a user may have added to a shopping basket or an itinerary as the user moves between pages on a website
  • Saving a user's preferences to allow them to customise a website
  • Measuring what users do on a website to ascertain which parts of a website are popular, how long they spend on a website, how often users return, where they come from etc

How do we use Cookies on this website?

Cookies are set by this website (first party cookies) but may also be set by other websites (e.g. YouTube) that run content on the website’s pages (third party cookies).

Cookies can be set to remember a visitor for the duration of their visit (session cookies) or to remember a visitor for repeat visits (persistent cookies).

On this website we use cookies to:

  • Keep track of whether your browser has JavaScript enabled
  • Keep track of whether the cookie policy has been agreed to
  • Keep track of whether you are logged in or out of the website
  • Anonymously measure how you interact with the website through Google Analytics
  • Enable the function of some forms through Dotmailer’s survey tool
  • Enable our Live Chat support option
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks such as Facebook
  • Allow you to share pages via Add This

The type of cookies used

We use two types of cookie to enhance your experience on our website:

Persistent cookies: these remain on a user's device after they exit their browser and until the cookie's specified expiration date, unless deleted earlier by the user. They are activated each time a user visits the website that generated the cookie.

Session cookies: these last for the duration of the user's browser session and are deleted when the user exits the browser.

Essential cookies 

Essential Drupal cookies that are required for the smooth running of the site:

Drupal

  • cookie beginning: SSESS this is used to recognise if you are logged in to the website and expires when you exit your browser.
  • has_js is used to indicate whether or not the visitors browser has JavaScript enabled and expires when you exit your browser.
  • cookie-agreed is used to log whether a user has consented to the use of cookies and has an expiration of 100 days.

Non-Essential Cookies

Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager: These persistent cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site:

Google Analytics: 

  • _ga is used to distinguish users and has an expiration of 2-years.
  • _gid is used to distinguish users and has an expiration of 24-hours.
  • _gat_UA-nnnnnnn-n is a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites and has an expiration of 2 years.

Google Tag Manager: 

  • _dc_gtm_UA-nnnnnnn-n is used to load other scripts and code into a page and has an expiration of 2 years.

ResponseTap: these persistent cookies are used to collect information on users who call Business West after activity on our website: 

ResponseTap: 

  • JSESSIONID is a platform session cookie that expires when you exit your browser
  • adiV and adiS cookies are used to link user website behaviour to telephone calls made to Business West and has an expiration of 1 year.
  • adiLP is used to help track visitors who have multiple tabs open in the same browser to prevent errors in tracking and has an expiration of 1 year.
  • adiVi contains an identifier which is used to help track a visitor's path while they are on the website and has an expiration of 30 minutes.

AddThis: these persistent cookies are used to collect information on users that share content from the Business West website: 

AddThis: 

  • __atuvc and __atuvs are cookies that are embedded in this site to enable visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. It stores an updated page share count and has an expiration of 2 years.
  • Bku 

Facebook uses persistent/session cookies to offer Facebook Products to you and to understand the information they receive about you, including information about your use of other websites and apps, whether or not you are registered or logged in.

Facebook:

  • fr cookie tracks opted-out Facebook users that is used for advertising purposes

How to change your cookie settings

Each browser has different settings which allow a user to adjust their particular cookie permissions. You can block or remove cookies by changing the settings of your browser. These changes will apply to all websites that you visit (unless you choose to block cookies from certain sites).

If you delete cookies you may lose your preferences. If you block cookies completely many websites may not work correctly as certain functionality can rely on the use of cookies. We do not recommend turning cookies off when using our websites for these reasons.

To find out more, consult your browser’s help function. We’ve provided links to the relevant pages for some common browsers.

Further reading

Information on cookies can be found on the ICO website. If you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy please contact marketing@businesswest.co.uk 

For more information about how we collect, store and handle your data, view our privacy policy.