It's not just the Italians. Why are the Belgians resistant to social media? Why do the British and Germans need more information before they make a purchase? In short, why do buyers in different countries behave differently?

Answering this question was one of the key aims of the Buyersphere Report 2011, a major study of B2B buyers that asked over 1,000 buyers from five European countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium) about the information sources they used during the buying process.

And the findings were very interesting...

An updated EU ePrivacy Directive comes into effect on May 26 with a controversial new stipulation that websites must ask users for permission to set cookies, and during this process must explain what the cookie is used for.  

The legislation is driven by concern about how some cookies store user data that is then shared between sites without the knowledge of users. This is a genuine issue that quite rightly needs guidelines (though often hyped up by scaremongers), but however well-intentioned the legislation is, it will be difficult to make work in practice.   For instance, the Directive takes a one-size-fits-all approach to cookies and doesn't distinguish between a purely functional cookie that stores no user information and a more 'intrusive' cookie used (say) by 3rd party advertisers for behavioural targeting.

For this reason the legislation touches just about every website as the web is underpinned by cookies, and they are not going away anytime soon.  The main issue facing businesses right now is how to comply given there's such a short time before it becomes law.   No one exactly seems to know what to do or how far to go.  

The truth is that everyone is watching to see how everyone else is going to tackle this.  Even the Information Commissioner's Office website has 6 cookies placed when you visit it, so it'll be interesting to see how they manage things (as of time of writing they are still in the same boat as everyone else).

The government have announced that, while the law comes into effect on 26 May, they will give all businesses a reasonable period of time to adapt and adjust, and that no one will be in trouble providing they are taking steps to comply.  They appreciate that making changes and updates will take time and will cost each business money.  

The first thing every business should now to is audit their site to understand how cookies are used.  But you know this already don't you?  After all this should be disclosed in your existing privacy policy (a legal requirement since 2003).

There are then probably five options right now for businesses:

1. A strict interpretation means implementing a strict opt-in policy for every type of cookie your site.   This pretty much means the death of user experience, and just watch your bounce rate rocket.  See this humourous example of how bad it could be.
   
   
2. A similar but slightly less irritating version involves putting a single popup/layer/splash page in front of first time visitors asking them to agree to place cookies on their site.  This should be a one-size-fits-all statement covering all cookies that could at least be styled a little nicer to the example above.  Still not good for first impressions, and we still imagine some adverse effect on bounce rate.
   
   
3. A subtler approach, and one we think can be used as a stop gap, is to have a clear flag/button on your homepage about the EU Directive (e.g. a tab on the top left that expands on user click), that lists the site's cookie usage.   If you clearly state that 'We are working hard right now to comply with the EU directive etc', then your are following Government guidelines.  This then allows you to....
   
   
4. 'Wait and see what others do'.  This will be the most common approach.   Do nothing drastic right now and let's see what the ICO and others implement on May 26 and shortly afterwards then to see what standards emerge.   (In fact, many businesses (including large brands) are quite unaware of the legislation, so are taking this approach through ignorance).
    
   As advice on implementation has been woolly and no one has any idea how the legislation will be enforced (if at all), sitting tight to see what others do first is arguably the best approach.  You are unlikely to get 'done', unless you being very naughty and unscrupulously selling on user data.
   
   
5. A final method is to develop a new or alternative site that will never use cookies.   This is fine for a simple, flat site, but ultimately will be limiting on functionality and (when more functionality is required) will cost a lot more to develop as timely workarounds will need to be coded.  But this isn't economically or functionally feasible for most businesses.  
   

I'd suggest a combination of #3 and #4 above is best for the next 2-3 months. If your business is the type whose legal team starts hyperventilating at the mention of this legislation then maybe you need to consider #2.   Overall, we think that a practical, usable approach will emerge, gain consensus and be adopted over the next 6 months or so, and as long as we make it very easy for users to understand what cookies are being used for, we feel it's good to sit tight for this consensus to appear.>

Ultimately, in future this issue will probably be solved by browser developers, so that users can set their own personal cookie preferences within browser settings, allowing users to set the types of cookies that they will allow and (in fact, Firefox 4 already has an option allowing users to block Google Analytics.).  

But to do this, standards need to emerge to classify types of cookies.  This is going to take time, and similar but (of course) subtly different US legislation is due out soon, which also need to be accommodated.  

So in the meantime, be seen to be taking steps to comply, then let's see what  practical approaches emerge.

Download Buyersphere Report 2011 here

Search for the term "information overload" on Google and you get over 6 million results. It's a pretty common problem and nowhere, you might have guessed, would this problem manifest itself more readily than in the world of business.

The web is awash with articles, webinars, blogs and guides all designed to offer information to buyers who are wondering what product to buy. But, incredibly, it seems that buyers are hungry for more.

The recently released Buyersphere Report 2011 surveyed over 1,000 business buyers about the information sources they used when researching purchases. Not their opinions, mind - the survey was specifically designed to find out what buyers actually did, rather than what they thought - and the results show that the hunger for information shows no sign of being satisfied as yet.