Cookie policy

You can’t dunk these.

What are cookies?

As is common practice with most professional websites, this site uses cookies. Cookies are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how I use it and why I sometimes need to store these cookies. I will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored, however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the site.

How I use cookies

Cookies are used for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this website. It is recommended that you leave all cookies on if you are unsure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help function for how to do this). Cookies affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this site, so it is recommended that they remain enabled.

The cookies I set

This site offers an email newsletter subscription service and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

When you submit data through a form, such as those found on the Contact page or blog comment forms, cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Third-party cookies

In some special cases, cookies provided by trusted third parties are used. The following section details which third-party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics, one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web, to help understand how you use the site and ways to improve your experience. Cookies for Google Analytics and other third-party analytics are used to track and measure things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit. This is so I can continue to produce engaging content and understand how to improve the site for you.

For more information on Google Analytics’ cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

From time to time I may test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site and ensure that I understand which optimisations users appreciate the most.

As I sell services, it’s important for me to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to the website book a service and cookies will track this data. This is important to you as it means that I can accurately make business predictions that allow me to monitor the advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

I may use adverts to offset the costs of running this site and provide funding for further development. The behavioural advertising cookies used by this site are designed to ensure that you are provided with the most relevant adverts where possible by anonymously tracking your interests and presenting similar things that may be of interest.

In some cases, I may provide you with custom content based on what you share about yourself, either directly or indirectly, by linking a social media account. These types of cookies allow me to provide you with content that may be of interest to you.

I also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work, the following social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, will set cookies through the website which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

More information

Hopefully that's clarified things for you. If there's something that you are unsure whether you need it or not, it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on this site. If you're still looking for more information then please contact me.

Version updated: 12 September 2018