What Are Cookies?

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

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies, or the BBC article here.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies 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 site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

The Cookies We Set

Necessary Cookies

These cookies are essential for the websites functionality. Enabling users to navigate the website and utilise its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website.

Without these cookies, services that you have requested, such as the shopping cart or online checkout, cannot be provided and the functionality of our website may be limited.

Statistics/Performance Cookies

Statistic/performance cookies provides an understanding of how visitors interact with our website by collecting and reporting information anonymously. Website interactions include what pages are visited most often, how long users visit our website for and if there are any error messages across the website.

These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.

Marketing Cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests, as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. These cookies also collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.

These cookies do not collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see Google’s policy. Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most. Several partners advertise on our behalf and affiliate tracking cookies simply allow us to see if our customers have come to the site through one of our partner sites so that we can credit them appropriately and where applicable allow our affiliate partners to provide any bonus that they may provide you for making a purchase.

We 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; LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter), will set cookies through our site 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.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will 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 the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us.