Cookies

Tue May 19 08:11:20 PDT 1998

The Web's Cookie Monsters Don't Take No for an Answer

Gene Koprowski
Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

How would you react if you strolled into a store on Fifth Avenue and
a salesman followed you around from aisle to aisle, taking down
notes every time you casually eyed something on the rack? You'd
probably bolt out of the store never to return again -- even if you
were told all that note-taking was intended to give you better
customer service.

Veteran Internet users say that this kind of cartoonish sales
approach is popping up on too many commercial Web sites, thanks to
the overzealous use of technology known as "cookies." And long term,
an over-reliance on this intrusive marketing tool could cause
something of a backlash against Web commerce.

"I was offered 36 cookies in the process of searching for one title"
on a well-known Internet-commerce site recently, says Ryan Wilson,
vice president of the information-technology group at Karakas,
VanSickle & Ouellette, a Portland, Ore., public-relations agency, in
a typical lament. "I sent a 'what gives' note ... and received a form
letter explaining what cookies are. Sheesh!"

But Mr. Wilson got the last laugh -- he says he rarely does business
with the offending site now.

What exactly are cookies, and how have they become such a
sometimes-unwelcome part of our on-line lives?

First off, there are a variety of evil abilities widely ascribed to
cookies that they simply don't have, such as the ability to sneak
privileged information off your hard drive or send you viruses.
Cookies are digital identification tags, small files sent to your
computer by a site's server. They're used by Web masters for a
variety of reasons, including gathering certain information about
visitors and tracking their movements. Such information is then often
used to provide customized content to visitors. (The Wall Street
Journal Interactive Edition describes its use of cookies as "an
inherent part of our production process," but offers a lengthy Cookie
Disclosure Statement for its users' perusal.)

The marketing theory behind all of this was first espoused in the
book The One-to-One Future by marketers Don Peppers and Martha
Rogers. The concept is this: Companies can better serve their
customers if they know what they want, and, by using electronic tags,
Web marketers can essentially get into the unconscious minds of their
prospects and deliver the products of their dreams to them.

"Information about your age, occupation, lifestyle, income level,
marital status, buying preferences" could be conveyed via cookies to
the marketer, says Michael Schmarak, a spokesman for GlobalLink New
Media, a developer whose clients include General Motors, Volvo and
Ford. "For example, I am a big jazz-guitar fan. I may visit a Web
site and hear jazz-guitar music in the background while the navigation
buttons all look like jazz guitars. This allows marketers to
custom-tailor their messages to individual tastes and preferences."

It's a great theory -- but in practice, cookies can be mysterious, a
bit frightening, and more than a bit annoying -- especially if you're
one of the many surfers with a browser set to warn you before
accepting a cookie. That function is built into browsers, as is the
capability to refuse cookies. But all too many of the Web's cookie
monsters have adopted a stance that amounts to force-feeding surfers
these goodies -- and lecturing those who don't have a sweet tooth.
Some surfers charge that the worst of the cookie monsters substitute
haranguing hapless visitors about how great cookies are for customer
service for actually providing such solid service.

Jane Waller, president of the IceGroup Inc., a Wakefield, Mass.,
e-commerce consultant, reserves her scorn for the household name in
software that gets "quite upset" with anyone who rejects a cookie on
their site and redirects the offender to "a 'come to cookies'
sermon."

"Interestingly, they've toned down the language recently from a 'Can
we talk?' in-your-face kind of pitch to a milk-and-honey approach,"
she says. "Now, you can almost hear the sweet music and imagine the
lights dimming as they launch into their 'why cookies are good for
you' story."

Then there are sites that take a passive-aggressive approach to
cookie refusers. Take one retailer of sporting goods and clothing
that's recently set up shop in the on-line world. Surf to its site
with the cookie function disabled on your browser and the site's
server will offer up an error message, without any hint that the
"error" was caused by your refusal to play along with its marketers.
Turn the cookies function back on and the problem goes away.

"There has to be a better way," says Mr. Wilson.

Some surfers have determined to have it both ways, seeking out
software available to arm them in what's becoming a cookie arms race.
There are programs such as Cookie Crusher that automatically accept
or reject cookies based on your preferences; as well as others that
trick sites into thinking cookies have been accepted when they
haven't, or accept them and then discard them the minute you surf
somewhere else -- the cyberspace equivalent of taking the cookie,
hiding it in your fist and crumbling it into dust under the table.

Fortunately, there is the better way that Mr. Wilson is seeking --
and marketers like Lands' End (www.landsend.com) are among the
practitioners.

The first step, says Alby Segall, president of Alby Segall &
Associates, a Denver public-relations consulting firm, is to practice
"permission marketing" with cookies.

In other words, Web sites shouldn't automatically try to milk
information from customers with cookies when they first arrive at the
site -- they should take a more gradual approach.

"Be clear and let them know exactly what you want," says Ms. Segall.

Next, if the customer refuses to provide the information, they should
still be able to see the site, and not have to suffer through
needless error messages or some other such cyber-punishment. "You have
to allow visitors, if they wish, to opt out of the cookie process,"
says Ira Victor, president of 452 Degrees, a San Francisco
interactive Web consulting group.

In addition to that, the Web site should offer the customer (or
potential customer) some real benefit for providing the information
that is requested -- not just some spin about how great everything
will be once they provide the information requested.

Some sites do take these issues seriously. Take on-line toy retailer
Holt Educational Outlet, which recently conducted focus groups to
determine if using cookies on its site (www.holtoutlet.com) was
appropriate.

"Customers were not afraid to use the cookie as long as the next time
they logged on, they were greeted with 'Hi, XYZ customer' and were
offered special pricing and discounts based upon their particular
buying habits," says Annie D. Bourgeois, a spokeswoman for Holt.

Not all -- or even most -- uses of cookies are sneaky. Some are
time-savers, like those that save your user name and password to save
you typing whenever you visit a site. Others are all but essential to
e-commerce, such as cookies that keep track of products ordered in a
virtual shopping cart and then are used to total the order when you
check out.

Long-term, on-line marketers hope that the rogues among them will
start treating cyberspace's customers the same way customers in the
bricks-and-mortar demand to be treated: with courtesy and respect.
And they note that some of the annoying technological problems with
cookies will eventually be solved.

But for the short-term, Web surfers face some disagreeable choices:
Keep opening wide to gobble down sweets from a stranger, get under
the hood of your browser to install a plug-in that lets you cheat, or
endure the technological cold shoulder given to those who dare to
turn off the cookie function.

"Data-collection folks see them as fortune cookies," says Ms. Waller,
speaking for countless other surfers. "I, personally, just toss my
cookies."

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