Is My Wix Cookie Banner GDPR Compliant?
Just adding a cookie banner to your Wix site isn’t enough to make it compliant, this catches a lot of people out, especially if the banner ‘looks’ right. The ICO doesn’t just care about whether a banner shows; it expects cookies to be blocked until someone actively agrees. I’ll walk through what Wix gets wrong by default, and what typically needs fixing.
Does Wix have a built-in cookie consent tool?
Yes, but the default configuration doesn’t meet ICO requirements without manual changes.
Wix’s cookie consent feature lives in Dashboard > Settings > Cookies and Tracking. It lets you display a banner and set cookie categories. The issue is that two critical settings, blocking cookies before consent and covering third-party integrations, are usually left off. On a fresh Wix setup, both tend to be disabled unless you’ve gone looking for them.
If you turned on the banner when you first built your site and haven’t revisited it since (which is what most people do), there’s a good chance it’s showing a banner but not blocking cookies. They might sound similar, but only one of them keeps you compliant.
What does Wix’s default cookie setup get wrong?
There are a few patterns that come up again and again: cookies firing too early, third-party tools slipping through, and the decline option being buried.
Wix’s own analytics tools can fire on page load before a visitor touches the banner. Apps installed from the Wix App Market such as Hotjar, live chat tools or Facebook Pixel, often run on their own rules. I’ve seen sites where everything looked compliant in Wix, but one app was still dropping cookies immediately on load. Likewise, the ‘Manage Settings’ or ‘Decline’ option is often tucked away as a small grey link next to a bright green ‘Accept All’ button, easy to miss unless you’re looking for it, which the ICO considers an unfair dark pattern.
In practice, the ICO’s position is pretty straightforward: non-essential cookies must not fire until a visitor actively consents. A banner that appears after cookies have already loaded doesn’t meet that standard. What matters isn’t the banner itself, it’s whether anything is being held back until someone clicks.
How do I check whether my Wix site is dropping cookies before consent?
Open your site in an incognito window and take a look at Developer Tools before clicking the banner.
In Chrome or Firefox, press F12 to open Developer Tools. Go to Application (Chrome) or Storage (Firefox), then Cookies, then your domain. Reload the page, but don’t click Accept. If you can see cookies listed before touching the banner, that’s the giveaway, they’re being set too early.
Look specifically for: _ga or _gid (Google Analytics), _fbp (Facebook Pixel), hjid or hjsession (Hotjar). These are the ones that show up most often in audits. Any third-party cookie domain you don’t recognise should also be investigated.
One thing that gets missed surprisingly often: cookies aren’t the whole compliance picture.
Your site also needs a privacy policy, terms and conditions, and correct business information in the footer. If you’ve never looked at these together (for example, checking your cookie setup alongside your privacy policy), gaps tend to slip through, our free compliance checker covers all of them in one scan. It only takes a few seconds to run.
What do I need to change in Wix to fix my cookie compliance?
To fix it, you’ll need to turn on cookie blocking, review your apps, make the decline option clearer, and double-check your categories match what’s being used.
In Wix Dashboard: Settings > Cookies and Tracking > enable “Block cookies before consent given.” This setting is off by default on many accounts. Enabling it is the single most important change you can make.
Go through every app in your Wix App Market installs. On Facebook Pixel: Navigate to the pixel settings menu where you must enable the “Respect visitor cookie preferences” toggle. On Hotjar: Ensure that you pause all data collection until the visitor has provided explicit consent. For any live chat tool, check whether it has its own consent setting.
Finally, check that your banner shows Decline or Manage preferences as clearly as Accept. A grey “×” tucked into the corner that visitors have to hunt for doesn’t meet that standard and it’s a common setup on default templates.
If you’re still working out whether you need a cookie banner at all, we’ve covered the full legal picture in our guide to whether a UK website needs a cookie banner.
Is there a point where it’s simpler to start with a properly built site?
Yes, and for most small business owners I speak to, the time spent auditing and fixing cookie compliance on a DIY site exceeds the cost of getting it done properly from the start.
In practice, cookie issues usually show up alongside other small problems. They sit alongside slow load times, email that doesn’t quite work, and a site that looks fine on desktop but breaks on mobile. Our article on why DIY website builders don’t work for small businesses covers the full pattern.
Duport’s website build comes with cookie compliance configured correctly from day one. You don’t have to go through each app or wonder if you’ve missed something. We typically get sites up and running within a 72 hours.
Duport’s website build starts from £360. Mention this article when you get in touch and we’ll honour the £144 rate.
Get your website sorted →
FAQs
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Does turning on the Wix cookie banner make my site automatically compliant?
No, the banner needs to be configured to block cookies before consent is given, and this setting is off by default on most Wix sites I’ve reviewed.
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Does the Wix cookie banner cover third-party apps from the App Market?
Not automatically, this is another one that catches people out, apps like Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, and live chat tools often load independently and need to be configured individually to respect Wix’s consent settings.
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What should my Wix cookie categories include?
At minimum, you’ll want: Strictly Necessary (always on), Analytics (consent required), and Marketing (consent required). Each category should describe the actual tools you use, not just generic descriptions.
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How do I check what third-party cookies my Wix site is loading?
Use Chrome Developer Tools (F12 > Application > Cookies), or a free cookie scanner such as CookieYes’s free website scan, both show exactly which cookies load on your site and from which source domains.
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Is my Wix or Squarespace website legally compliant in the UK?
Not automatically. UK law requires your website to include a privacy policy, a cookie notice, clear terms and conditions, and specific business information, such as your registered company name and number if you’re a limited company. Most website builders include template pages for some of these, but they don’t check whether your content is accurate or complete. Use our free website compliance checker to see what your site has and what it’s missing.
