Cookie Policy
This Policy has been designed to give you confidence, and provide you with an understanding of how Countrywide Limited. (Company number 08340090) and its subsidiaries (also referred to throughout this policy as ‘Countrywide’, ‘we’, ‘us’, or ‘our’) use different types of cookies on our websites, as part of the services we provide, and how you can control them.
Personal information collected through the use of cookies for any purpose other than where strictly necessary and for the performance of the website, is obtained via your consent, by us being fully transparent about the cookies on our websites, and providing you the opportunity to opt out of any personal data processing where applicable.
Further information in regards to other ways in which we collect and process your information can be located within our Privacy Notice.
What are Cookies
Cookies are small files stored on your computer or device that are downloaded by your Internet Browser when you visit a website. Cookies contain minimal amounts of information that is mainly used to assist and support the efficiency of the websites. Websites can read and write small cookie files for example to allow them to recognise you, if you were to re-visit the website again, with the aim to provide a smoother customer journey.
Depending on their function and intended purpose there are two types of cookies: Persistent and Session.
Persistent cookies: These cookies can also be known as first party cookies and work by tracking your online actions and preferences. They stay on your device after you have closed your browser and are activated every time you visit the website where the cookie was generated. Sometimes persistent cookies are used by websites to provide targeted advertising based on your browsing history.
Persistent Cookies are stored by the browser and remain until their set expiry date, or until you physically delete the cookie yourself. Persistent Cookies have a defined expiry data to ensure they only exist for a reasonable period of time to fulfil their intended purpose.
Session cookies: These cookies help you navigate your way through the internet by remembering the actions you have taken. Session Cookies are temporary and only last as long as your browsing time, once your browser has closed, the cookies expire.
Third Party Cookies
When you visit our web pages you may notice some cookies that are not related to us because third parties may use their own cookies to collect and use information about your activities on our websites. These cookies are also known as tracking cookies. Third Party Cookies collects various types of data, mostly anonymised, based on your online behaviour and this information may be shared with these or other third parties who help organisations improve products and services, or provide you and others with custom marketing material, such as advertisements linked to interests.
Third party cookies can be session or persistent. We do not control the setting or retention of these cookies, therefore you will need to refer to the third parties website to amend your preferences / manage your settings.
We will always provide you with the option to accept or reject, where applicable, cookies that can be controlled from our website.
Third Party Providers
Examples of third party providers that may set cookies on our site, include but are not limited to:
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager: These are third party cookies used to track visitors, and collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports, help us improve the website and where applicable assist with targeted marketing. No personally identifiable information is stored. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website, how visitors got to the website, and the pages they visited. This data may be further shared with other third parties that we have partnered to assist us with targeted advertising and/or other marketing purposes.
Facebook Pixel: These are third party cookies used to track visitors, and collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports, help us improve the website and where applicable assist with targeted marketing. The cookies collect information in mostly anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website, how visitors got to the website, and the pages they visited. This data may be further shared with other third parties that we have partnered to assist us with targeted advertising and/or other marketing purposes.
AddThis: This is the world’s largest social infrastructure and data platform. The company creates easy ways for users to share content and enjoy more personal experiences across the web while providing increased traffic, engagement and data for web publishers (formerly known as Clearspring Technologies).
Investis: This is a company specialising in digital infrared (IR) and corporate communications for public companies.
HotJar: To analyse improvements on our web pages by tracking IP address and producing heatmaps. Heatmaps tell us what sections on the website (such as menu links or call to actions) users are interacting with. This gives us an insight to see what sections need improving on pages. The heatmaps do not capture or store any of your personal data. Find out more about heatmaps – https://www.hotjar.com/heatmaps. In addition we also use recordings to show us what users are doing when they are browsing our website. This allows us to understand how users interact with and navigate through our website. This is useful to identify any technical issues (e.g. broken links) so we can fix these asap. Actions such as mouse movements, clicks and scrolls are captured. The recordings DO NOT capture or store any personal data, we do not capture keystrokes and cannot see what information you are submitting when webforms are completed. Users are displayed anonymously. For more information visit– https://help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011647627-How-do-Hotjar-Recordings-Work-
We use this knowledge to determine whether the improvements on our websites actually work and can look to improve customer experience of our site over time.
Sharing from Countrywide Websites
If you take the opportunity to ‘share’ countrywide.co.uk content through social networks – such as Facebook and Twitter – you may be sent cookies from these websites. We do not control the setting of these cookies, so please check the third party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.
Purpose of Cookies
We and our third party service providers may use the information we get about you, through the use of cookies, for the following purposes:
- To recognise your device(s) when you visit our website.
- To remember if you have set any preferences on our website.
- To test new content and assess its performance.
- To improve our website’s usability.
- For functionality, necessity and performance of websites.
- To temporarily store data, for example this may be used as part of customer surveys.
- To remember if you have been informed of our Cookies Policy, Privacy Notice and other terms.
- To track you as you go through our website (we do this to track page usage, and see what paths have been used by visitors on our website; we may also track the use of our internet banner advertisements and other links from our and/or our marketing partners’ websites).
- To allow you to share pages with social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and to support social media components, like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (only where our website uses a plugin from these third party platforms).
- To make sure you do not miss information that is relevant to you (we may target information to our users, such as website content, marketing campaigns, direct marketing emails, and internet banner advertisements on our website and other websites).
- To analyse use of our website (we do this for statistical analysis and, sales and marketing research).
We may also combine web usage data with other information we have collected about you, and we may store this information so we can have a better and more specific understanding of the way individuals are using our website, and their preferences and interests. The data is stored for a limited time period and only for us long as necessary to fulfill its purpose.
Cookies We Collect
Below is a list of the first or third party categories of cookies we may use on our websites:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information. Your consent is not required for the use of these cookies.
Analytics Cookies
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.
Marketing Cookies
These cookies may be set on our websites by advertising third parties or for other marketing purposes. They may be used to build a profile of your interests to help show individuals relevant adverts or promotional material on other sites. They are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device, and in most cases data shared is anonymised. If you do not allow these cookies, we will be less able to offer targeted advertising.
Your browsing information may also be combined with other visitors as a wider review of the market to enhance campaigns and allow us to promote our services based on what is seen as common or popular at the time.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
Contact Us
Should you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy, or our privacy practices, please contact us as at privacy@countrywide.co.uk
v1 March 2020