A Canadian site generally needs clear, honest notice about its cookies, not a banner that blocks the page. Keep any notice to a small strip a thumb can dismiss, and get advice if you actively sell to Europe.

Half the screen, before anything else

Open some small business sites on a phone and the first thing you see is not the business. It is a block of text about cookies covering the bottom half of the screen, with a button that says accept.

Sometimes there is a close button, a small grey X in a corner, too small for a thumb. Sometimes there is no way past at all without agreeing.

Many of these banners went up when the GDPR came into force last May, often as a plugin on its default settings, checked on a desktop screen where they looked like a thin strip.

On a phone, the same text wraps onto eight lines, and the strip becomes a wall.

What goes wrong on a phone

The fifth is the one owners rarely see, because they dismissed each layer months ago on their own phone and the browser remembers. A first-time visitor meets all three at once.

What Canadian law asks for

Canadian privacy law, PIPEDA federally and similar laws in some provinces, does not prescribe a cookie banner. It asks that people understand what is collected about them and why, and that their consent is meaningful.

For tracking used in online advertising, the federal privacy commissioner has said opt-out consent can be acceptable, provided the information collected is not sensitive.

The purpose also has to be made obvious at or before collection, not buried in a policy, and opting out has to be easy and lasting.

So the notice does matter: it is how the purpose becomes obvious. But nothing in that requires a wall that must be accepted before the page can be read.

The European visitor question

The GDPR reaches businesses outside Europe in some circumstances: broadly, when they offer goods or services to individuals in the EU, or monitor their behaviour there.

A Canadian plumber whose site is occasionally visited from Germany is not, in any ordinary sense, offering services to Germans. A Canadian store pricing in euros and shipping to France may well be.

Where you genuinely sell to Europe, the question deserves an answer from a privacy lawyer, and a consent tool designed properly for phones. Whether ordinary analytics counts as monitoring is part of what to ask.

Where you do not, a banner borrowed from European practice may be solving a problem the business does not have, at the cost of every visitor's first screen.

Why Google cares

Since January 2017, Google has treated intrusive pop-ups on mobile as a negative signal: pages whose content is hard to reach from a phone, because something covers it on arrival from search, may not rank as well.

Announcing it in 2016, Google said notices responding to a legal obligation, such as cookie notices, would not be affected if used responsibly. Nor would banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easy to dismiss.

A modest strip a thumb can close is plainly on the right side of that line. A notice covering half the screen is a harder case, and the visitor may leave before Google has any say in it.

What a proportionate notice looks like

One or two short sentences in plain words, saying what the cookies are for, with a link to the privacy policy for the detail.

A strip along the bottom of the screen, small enough that the page is readable behind it, with a dismiss button large enough for a thumb.

No wall. The page works whether or not the visitor has touched the banner, and the banner stays dismissed once closed.

Where you offer an opt-out, make it work: a link that actually switches the tracking off, not a page explaining how to clear cookies in six browsers.

A worked example

A dog daycare and boarding business on the edge of a suburb installed a cookie plugin last spring, after its booking software's newsletter mentioned the GDPR.

The plugin's defaults put a dark panel across the lower half of the screen: a long paragraph about consent, a settings button, an accept button, and no other way to close it.

On a phone, the booking button on the home page sat behind the panel. A first-time visitor had to read about cookies, or accept them, before seeing the price list.

The business has no European customers; its clients live within a few kilometres. The panel became a single line with a dismiss button and a link to a rewritten privacy policy.

The booking button is now the first thing a visitor sees, on every phone the site was tested on.

Test it as a stranger

Owners almost never see their own banner, because they dismissed it once and the browser remembers.

Open the site in a private browsing window on a phone, which starts with no cookies, and look at the first screen as a new visitor would.

Try a small phone too. Check that the close button can be reached and tapped, and that the page works before you touch the banner.

Turn the phone sideways as well. A banner that fits upright can fill the screen when there is half the height to work with.

The counter-case

Some sites do need more than a strip.

A business that genuinely sells to Europe, or uses detailed advertising tracking, may need a real consent tool with choices, designed for phones from the start.

Removing the notice altogether is not the answer either. A site that sets tracking cookies and says nothing about them falls short of what Canadian law expects.

For most small Canadian sites, the answer is a clear, honest notice that a visitor can read, close and forget.

The order to fix it in

  1. Open the site privately on a phone.
  2. Note how much the banner covers.
  3. Try to close it with a thumb.
  4. Decide whether you sell to Europe.
  5. Cut the notice to two plain sentences.
  6. Remove any wall blocking the page.
  7. Rewrite the privacy policy it links to.

Step four is the one that decides everything else. A business with European customers needs a proper consent design; one without them needs a smaller notice, and the two should not be confused.

The consent wording behind the notice is covered in consent wording after the first big GDPR fine.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Canadian website need a cookie banner?

Canadian law does not prescribe one. It asks that people understand what is collected and why, so a clear notice and a plain privacy policy matter more than a banner's size.

What goes wrong with cookie banners on phones?

Desktop text wraps until it fills the screen, close buttons are too small or off the edge, banners stack with pop-ups, and some walls hide the page until accepted.

Does the GDPR apply to my Canadian site?

Broadly, when you offer goods or services to individuals in the EU or monitor their behaviour there. Occasional European visitors are different from selling to Europe; ask a privacy lawyer.

Can a cookie banner hurt search rankings?

Since 2017, Google has treated intrusive mobile pop-ups as a negative signal. It exempts responsible legal notices and reasonable, dismissible banners, so a modest strip is fine.

What does a proportionate notice look like?

One or two plain sentences about what the cookies are for, a privacy policy link, a strip a thumb can dismiss, and a page that works without touching it.

How do I see my banner as visitors do?

Open the site in a private browsing window on a phone, which starts without cookies. Try a small phone and turn it sideways, since banners grow when height shrinks.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Cookie banner covering your phone screen?

We will test it on small phones, cut it to a proportionate notice and rewrite the policy behind it.

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