About Cookies and This Policy
In this policy we explain what cookies are and how we use cookies on our website. We hope that reading this policy helps you to understand the way in which cookies facilitate the collection of personal and non-personal information and how we use that information. For more detail on our methods for keeping this data secure and an explanation of what we do in the event of a data breach please refer to our Privacy Policy.
This document also outlines your rights regarding personal data you supply to us. We are always happy to answer any queries you may have. Contact us:
Address: 1 Lowfarm Place, Moulton Park, Northampton NN3 6HY
Phone: 01604 659888
Email: james@energisestudios.com
Cookies Explained
Cookies do not actually store any information in and of themselves. They are typically very small plain text files that contain a unique identifier. For example “GA1.2.1394731747.1568817428” is the contents of the _gid cookie placed by Google Analytics on my computer terminal as I write this policy, (yours will be different.) In this way Google Analytics can differentiate between my behaviour on this website, (which pages I visit, how long I stay on each page, etc.) and your behaviour on this same website. Cookies fall into different categories;
Essential / Necessary Cookies
Sometimes it is essential to place a cookie in order for certain website functionality to take place. For example, an eCommerce website would not be able to track the contents of a visitors virtual “shopping basket” without assigning them a unique identifier. The website doesn’t require personal data like shipping address or payment information until the checkout process happens. This makes for a smoother experience. (Imagine how obstructive it would be to have to create an account before you embarked on any online shopping activity.)
Performance & Website Enhancement Cookies
Tracking a persons usage of a website is how we can see divergence from expected behaviour and can then improve the user experience of our website. For example, say we offered a downloadable catalogue on our pricing page, but found that less than the expected number of visitors were downloading it, we could change the colour of the “download now” button, change its position on the page, or increase the size of it.
Advertising or Targeting Cookies
By placing a small cookie on your terminal (computer, tablet, smartphone) when you view a particular page of a website, a retailer is able to re-target your terminal and any other devices that share a linked account, such as Google’s free Gmail service. It is in this way that after viewing a certain product or service on a vendors website, you may notice increased display advertisements for that same product, while browsing other websites. This is called “Re-Targeting” and is intended to show you advertisements you are more likely to be interested in. (Because you already viewed the product / service page.) N.B.// The space where the display advert appears was already set aside by the site author to show some kind of advertisement. The placement of the cookie, on your terminal, is intended for the advertiser to be able to raise a hand and say, “I believe this person has some degree of interest in my particular product, based on their previous behaviour.”
How We Use Cookies On Our Website
It is our intention to use cookie technology to improve your experience on our website by recognising previous choices. For example, your acceptance of our Cookie and Privacy notice banner pop-up. We also use cookies to make your browsing experience unique, attempting to present content that you are more likely to be interested in. And we also analyse site viewing behaviour in order to identify and solve any usability problems. For example, our visitors not being able to find the download they requested.
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Disclosure of the Cookies We Use
We use our own proprietary cookie on our website called “PHPSESSID” this is for tracking user behaviour and preferences the user may have set. For example, whether or not the user has accepted our cookie and privacy banner notification. We also use this cookie to identify users that have purchased course content from us, so that they do not have to log in each time they visit pages containing our restricted content.
If you would like to opt out of this cookie, you can do so by changing the settings on your website browser. Look for “Cookie Preferences”. However, if you choose to block this particular cookie, our website may not function as intended. Any preferences you have stored or access to certain pages may be lost and you may not be able to access any restricted content you have purchased access to.
Cookies Placed By Third Parties
Google Analytics is a 3rd party tool we use to observe user behaviour on our website and improve our website visitor’s experience. Google Analytics places two cookies on your terminal, namely _gid and _ga. Further information about Google Analytics placement and purpose of cookies can be found here.
Drift is an online chat web application we use in order to facilitate website visitors being able to start a conversation with us, without having to leave the page they are on. Drift uses three cookies, named; driftt_wmd, driftt_aid and DFTT_END_USER_PREV_BOOTSTRAPPED. Further information on Drift and how it uses cookies can be found here.
Wistia is a 3rd party video hosting web service we use. Wistia provides us with detailed analytics, showing us how many people have watched our videos and how far through the video they have watched. This enables us to identify areas of the video where people are dropping off and losing interest. We use this data to edit our video content, so that our videos are more concise and we increase viewer engagement. The single cookie Wistia places on your terminal is named __distillery. Further information on Wistia’s use of cookies can be found here.
How do you Block or Change your Cookie Preferences?
Modern web browsers now contain the ability to block cookies. You are able to accept or refuse specific cookies. You are also able to view the cookies stored on your device and delete them should you want to. Further information about how to manage the cookies stored on your device can be found here.
Again we must emphasise, if you block cookies on our website, you may experience difficulty in accessing certain pages and certain functionality may not behave as intended.
Changes to this Cookie Policy
We reserve the right to update this policy. Minor updates may be made without additional notification, so if you are concerned about the specifics of any of the points covered on this page, we recommend that you re-visit this url. (The address of this web page.) In the event of significant changes to this policy, we will notify you by email, if you have provided us with your address. We will also ensure our notification banner appears again in subsequent visits to our website.
This cookie policy was last updated on Thursday the 19th of September 2019.
