Ecommerce, SaaS and Marketing Websites: Common Tags by Region

This guide is for ecommerce stores, SaaS products and marketing websites. It sets up UniConsent with the analytics, advertising and marketing tags your website runs, so that each tag gets the consent it needs in Europe and in the other regions where you have visitors.

Time needed: about 1 hour: about 10 minutes for Steps 1 and 2, 5 to 10 minutes for each tag in Step 4, and about 30 minutes to test and check in Steps 6 and 7. Changes you publish in the dashboard can take a few minutes to reach your site.

Who does what: Steps 1, 3, 6 and 7 are done in your UniConsent dashboard and your browser. Steps 2, 4 and 5 change your website's code or your Google Tag Manager, so your web developer may want to help with those.

Step 1: Choose Your Banner Type

Choose Consent Categories. Visitors choose between four categories, and Google Consent Mode follows their choice:

If your site also runs programmatic ads, or your advertising partners need IAB TCF or IAB GPP signals, choose IAB TCF Advanced instead.

Step 2: Install the UniConsent Tag First

Add the UniConsent tag at the top of <head>, before every other tag, so it can hold the other tags until the visitor's choice is known. See Install UniConsent Tags for Web. There are also a WordPress plugin and a Shopify app: see the same page and Set Up the CMP for Shopify.

If you manage your tags in Google Tag Manager, load the UniConsent CMP tag with the Consent Initialization - All Pages trigger instead. See Consent Mode for Google Tag Manager.

Step 3: What Each Region Gets

Europe covers the European Union, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, San Marino, Serbia and Ukraine.

In the United Kingdom, the UK GDPR and the ICO's guidance require consent before non-essential cookies are set, so keep the UK in your Europe region: tags are held until the visitor accepts.

If you turn off the banner for a region, visitors from that region are treated as if no CMP were installed: no banner appears, and no tags or cookies are blocked.

Step 4: Integrate Your Tags

Some vendors read the visitor's choice themselves, so you do not need to block them: load them as usual and they adjust to the choice. These are Google tags through Google Consent Mode, Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising through Microsoft Consent Mode, the Meta Pixel and TikTok Pixel through the UniConsent consent tags, and Shopify through its Customer Privacy API. Blocking them is optional: if you prefer that they do not load at all before consent, use Basic Consent Mode for Google tags, or UnicScript for the others.

For other tags in your page code, set the tag's type to text/unicscript and add the category from Step 1:

<!-- Performance / Analytics, for example Hotjar -->
<script type="text/unicscript" unic-e-purpose-id="2">
  // your analytics tag code
</script>

<!-- Functionality, for example a live chat widget -->
<script type="text/unicscript" unic-e-purpose-id="3">
  // your chat widget code
</script>

<!-- Targeting / Advertising, for example LinkedIn or Pinterest -->
<script type="text/unicscript" unic-e-purpose-id="4">
  // your advertising tag code
</script>

Do not hold the scripts your checkout, payments, login or shopping cart need: they are Strictly Necessary and must always load. For tags in Google Tag Manager that do not read Consent Mode, see Third party JavaScript Tags Integration.

With Google Tag Manager

If your tags are in Google Tag Manager, set them up with the consent signals that UniConsent sends:

1. Add the UniConsent CMP tag from the Community Template Gallery, enter your license ID, and use the Consent Initialization - All Pages trigger. In the tag's Consent Mode Default Consent Settings, set every consent type to denied for Europe, or for all regions. See Consent Mode for Google Tag Manager.
2. In Admin > Container Settings, turn on Enable consent overview.
3. Google tags (Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Floodlight, Conversion Linker) read Consent Mode themselves: keep their usual triggers, for example All Pages.
4. Other tags (Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, LinkedIn, Hotjar, chat widgets): set the trigger to a Custom Event named unic_data, which UniConsent sends with the visitor's choice. In the tag's Advanced Settings > Consent Settings, choose Require additional consent for tag to fire and add the consent type of its category from the table below. Under Tag firing options, choose Once per page.
5. Publish your container, then open Preview: the Consent tab shows the default (denied) and the update after the visitor's choice.

unic_data is sent at page load and again after each choice, with the Consent Mode update before it. A tag set up this way fires at the first moment its consent is granted, and only once per page. For conditions on the categories instead, see Third party JavaScript Tags Integration.

Step 5: Add the Privacy Settings Link

Visitors must be able to change their choice at any time. Add a privacy settings link, for example in your footer:

<a href="#" onclick='__unicapi("openunic");return false;'>Privacy Settings</a>

See Install UniConsent Tags for Web.

To keep a record of each visitor's choice, for example to answer a data protection request, turn on Consent Logging.

Step 6: Test Each Region

Open your site with a test location, then repeat with US, USCA (California) and the other regions you use:

https://www.example.com/?uniconsent_test=1&uniconsent_reset=1&uniconsent_geo=EU

See UniConsent Testing and Debug Tools.

Step 7: Confirm Tags and Cookies Are Controlled

Check that your tags and cookies follow the visitor's choice. Use a private browser window for each check, so that earlier choices and cookies do not carry over.

Quick check with the Consent Mode Checker

Enter your website address in the free Consent Mode Checker. It confirms that UniConsent is found on your site and that your Google tags receive the visitor's consent. See How to Use the Consent Mode Checker.

Check in Europe

1. Open your site with the EU test location, and do not click the banner yet.
2. Click the icon to the left of the address bar and open the list of cookies for the site. Before a choice, only strictly necessary cookies are there: no cookies from Google Analytics (_ga), Google Ads (_gcl_au), Meta (_fbp), TikTok (_ttp) or Hotjar (_hjSessionUser).
3. Accept all. The cookies of your analytics and advertising tags now appear in the list.
4. In a new private window, open the same address and reject all. The analytics and advertising cookies stay absent. Add a product to your cart, sign in and go to checkout: everything still works.
5. Reload the page. The banner does not appear again, and the cookies still follow the choice you made.
6. Open your privacy settings link, allow only Performance / Analytics, and check that only the analytics cookies appear.

Check in the United States

1. Open your site with the test location USCA (California). Tags load straight away.
2. Open the banner or your privacy settings link, turn off Targeting or Advertising and save. Advertising tags stop, and analytics keep running.

Check your cookie list

In your dashboard, open the cookie list of your project. The cookie scanner lists the cookies it finds on your site once a day. Check that each cookie has the right category and that no tracking cookie is listed as Strictly Necessary. See Manage Cookies List.

For your developer

Your developer can confirm the signals in the browser's developer tools:

• In Network, before a choice in Europe, there are no requests to advertising pixels such as facebook.com/tr or analytics.tiktok.com. With Advanced Consent Mode, Google Analytics requests (/g/collect) carry gcs=G100 (storage denied) until the visitor accepts, then gcs=G111.
• In the Console, this command shows the current choice: UNIC_EP_1 to UNIC_EP_4 are the four categories.

unicUpdate(console.log)

If a tag still sets cookies or sends requests before consent, it loads outside UniConsent's control. Find it in your page code, Google Tag Manager or a plugin, and integrate it as in Step 4.

Common Mistakes

• Installing the CMP without integrating your tags. The banner appears, but tags that are not integrated still load and set cookies before consent. Integrate every tag as in Step 4, and confirm it with Step 7.
• Not checking your vendors' reports after setup. A few days after going live, open the reports of your tags, for example Google Analytics, Google Ads conversions and Meta Events Manager, and compare them with the days before. A drop in line with the share of visitors who decline is expected. A much larger drop, or data that stops, usually means a tag is blocked completely or does not receive the consent signal. Your project's Insights in the dashboard show how many visitors accept.

Still have questions?

Contact us: support@uniconsent.com