Cookie banners · Reviewed
Cookie banner stacked with newsletter, chat and other popups
Raised by 12 people over 12 years (2015–2026), in 9 of them.
What people report
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GDPR has had a very detrimental effect on user experience, with never ending popups and warnings about crap nobody understands.
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when I see a modal forcing me to do an action before proceeding, I can be 100% sure they're up to something slimy
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Every site is legally obligated to hit every user with one of the all-time most hated UX experiences ever.
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those cookie banners broke the dam so that now it is normalized that you can pop up four different modals asking for an email address
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they are constantly bombarded with popups, cookie banners, two-factor prompts, captchas, and a zillion other things
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Principle
Minimize interruptions and cognitive load
People report cookie banners piled on top of newsletter, signup, app and other overlays, sometimes with two consent banners at once, all of which must be closed before they can read.
More issues about cognitive load and choice
A fix
Allow at most one overlay on arrival, the consent banner, and delay or drop newsletter and app prompts until the user has engaged with the content. Merge duplicate consent prompts from different scripts into a single banner.
Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?