Consent: strict and standard modes
Names in bold such as Home, Orders, Platforms, Events, Incidents, Billing and Help are pages and buttons of the Tikra app. You open it from Apps in your Shopify admin.
Before Tikra sends an order to a platform, it checks the buyer's consent choice for that platform's purpose. Your consent mode decides what happens when the buyer made no choice.
Which consent each platform needs
- Marketing: Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat, and Klaviyo on a store that connected it earlier.
- Analytics: Google Analytics 4.
Strict and standard
| The buyer | Strict | Standard |
|---|---|---|
| allowed the purpose | Sent | Sent |
| declined the purpose | Not sent | Not sent |
| made no choice yet | Not sent | Sent |
| opted out of the sale or sharing of their data | Not sent to marketing platforms | Not sent to marketing platforms |
"Made no choice yet" means the buyer had not answered your cookie banner when the order was placed. If nothing about the buyer's choice reached Tikra, the order shows "No signal" and is handled the same way.
- Strict: Tikra sends an order to a platform only when the buyer accepted cookies for that purpose. Use this if you sell to the EU, the UK or Switzerland. A new store starts in strict mode.
- Standard: Tikra sends an order unless the buyer declined. This includes a buyer who made no choice yet. Use it only where the law allows tracking without prior consent.
An opt-out of the sale or sharing of data stops orders to marketing platforms in both modes. Google Analytics 4 still gets the order when the buyer allowed analytics, with its ad consent signals set to denied.
You decide which mode is lawful for your markets. Tikra does not check that choice.
Change the mode
- Go to Platforms and scroll to Consent mode.
- Choose Strict or Standard. Each choice has one line on what it does.
- Click Save consent mode.
The change applies to new orders. Orders already sent or skipped keep their decision.
Buyers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland
A buyer from the European Economic Area (the EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), the United Kingdom or Switzerland is always handled in strict mode, even when your store uses standard mode. Tikra goes by the country of the order's billing address, or the shipping address when there is no billing address. When an order has no country, your store's mode applies.
Where the buyer's choice comes from
Tikra's pixel reads the choice from Shopify's consent record in the buyer's browser. Shopify's own cookie banner writes the choice there. The record also shows whether a buyer has not answered yet. You find the settings in your Shopify admin under Settings > Customer privacy. If you use another consent app, check that it passes the buyer's choice to Shopify. If it does not, Tikra gets no signal. If the pixel cannot read the record, Tikra goes by Shopify's settings, and a buyer who has not answered may show as Declined.
Where your Shopify privacy settings ask for consent and the pixel can read the record, a buyer who made no choice yet is reported only with the order: only the choice and a checkout reference. Tikra sends no checkout-step reports for that buyer. A buyer who declined is reported with the refusal and a checkout reference.
Where your Shopify privacy settings ask buyers in that region for consent, and when the pixel can read the record, the pixel reads nothing on the buyer's device except Shopify's consent record, stores nothing there and sends no store events until the buyer consents. This holds in both modes. It stops at once when the buyer declines.
A category is never allowed after the buyer declined it.
No choice and no signal
For each order, Tikra waits up to 20 minutes for the choice from the pixel. During that time the order shows Waiting with "Waiting up to 20 minutes for the consent signal from the storefront pixel." If the pixel reports that the buyer had not made a choice, the decision is No choice. If nothing arrives, the decision is No signal.
Some reasons for no choice:
- the buyer did not answer the cookie banner before paying.
Some reasons for no signal:
- a consent app does not pass the choice to Shopify;
- the pixel did not run, for example the buyer blocked it;
- the order did not go through the online checkout, for example an order you created in your Shopify admin.
In Strict mode, an order with no choice or no signal is not sent. Its line on the order page says, for example, "The buyer had not made a choice when the order was placed. Strict mode sends only with the buyer's consent." In Standard mode, such an order is sent. A buyer's refusal is never sent to the platforms it covers, whatever the mode.
Home shows how many orders had each decision: "Consent of these orders: ... accepted, ... declined, ... made no choice, ... with no signal." Only Shopify stores show a "made no choice" count.
Each order is decided once
The order page shows the buyer's choice under Consent: the decision, the marketing, analytics and sale or sharing choices, where the signal came from, the time it was decided and the consent mode used.
Orders skipped for consent are never sent again, even if you change the mode later. They also do not count in the 97 % check. See How the 97 % check and the 12-hour guarantee work.
WooCommerce stores
- Tikra reads the choice from your consent tool. We recommend the free WP Consent API plugin. Complianz, CookieYes and Cookiebot also work.
- Google Consent Mode alone cannot be read, so it gives no signal. Add the WP Consent API plugin.
- With no supported consent tool, Strict mode sends no orders. Standard mode sends them, except for buyers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland.
- The WooCommerce plugin does not read opt-outs of the sale or sharing of data.
Still stuck? Email support@tikratracking.com with your store address and an order number.