Understanding customer privacy settings in your Shopify admin

When you sell products through Shopify, it's crucial to comply with privacy and data protection laws and regulations that apply to your business. Privacy and data protection are fundamental aspects of ecommerce and are important to your customers. These requirements focus on data minimization, transparency, control, and security.

Understanding customer privacy settings in your Shopify Admin

When you log into your Shopify admin, you can manage your privacy settings on a per-region basis, set up a privacy policy, add a cookie banner, allow visitors to opt-out of their data being sold or shared, and view information about the geographic storage location of your data.

The region picker cards, which include a dialog listing all available countries and states, are used for configuring where the consent banner and opt-out page are displayed in your online store. These cards display the regions currently selected based on your configured markets.

Third-party privacy apps

If you prefer to use a third-party privacy app instead, then you can visit the Privacy category in the Shopify App Store. These privacy apps can be used as an alternative to Shopify's Customer privacy settings. You can explore the available options in this category by visiting the Store Management > Privacy and Security > Privacy section of the Shopify App Store.

Additionally, within the Customer privacy > Installed privacy apps settings, you can view and access any third-party privacy apps that you've already installed, if applicable to your store's setup.

Google Consent Mode v2

Google Consent Mode v2 is a feature that works with Google tags to handle user consent. Any event data transmitted to Google from customers, such as those located in the European Economic Area (EEA), won’t be used for personalized advertising unless Google Consent Mode v2 is activated and valid consent is obtained.

You need to correctly configure your customer privacy settings to ensure that consent is properly transmitted to Google and that data can be used for personalized advertising.

You can use a cookie banner to capture consent. If you opt for a third-party cookie banner, then integrate it with Shopify's customer privacy settings.

If you're using a custom web pixel, then manually insert a code snippet to activate Google Consent Mode v2. Refer to Create a Google Tag Manager custom pixel for more information.

For additional information on Google Consent Mode, refer to Google's support page.

Impact of cookie-based customer data collection and analytics

When a cookie banner is active in specific regions, data is collected from visitors from those regions only after obtaining consent. Consequently, there might be a reduction in the amount of data available for analytics, marketing, and personalization purposes. This can be observed through decreased session counts and other metrics that rely on session data, including conversion rates.

To learn more about impact of cookie-based customer data collection and analytics, refer to the documentation on analytics discrepencies and Shopify's cookie policy.

Configuring marketing settings

In the Marketing settings section, you can find links to the following pages or settings that are relevant in a privacy context:

• E-mail and SMS marketing at checkout: This feature allows you to confirm customer marketing preferences during the checkout process, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
• Double opt-in for marketing: By activating this setting, you can confirm customer contact details for marketing purposes, providing an additional layer of consent and privacy protection.

Customer data hosting locations

In the Customer data hosting location section, you can find the primary location where Shopify stores your store data, order data, and customer personal data. To learn more about data hosting locations, you can refer to the documentation on data hosting locations.