Cookie consent and privacy on Wix

Wix's cookie banner is now a partner product called Usercentrics for Wix. You add it from Privacy & Cookies in your site's dashboard, the basic version is free, and once it's on, Wix holds back non-essential cookies and scripts until each visitor consents. That covers the tools connected through Wix's Marketing Integrations, such as Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel, and Wix's own analytics.

The banner doesn't cover everything. Third-party apps and custom code you've added are outside its guaranteed control unless you categorize them yourself. And turning the banner on will make your traffic and ad reports look smaller, because visitors who decline are no longer counted.

This guide describes what the tools do. It isn't legal advice. Whether you need a banner, and what it has to say, depends on where your visitors are and what your business does with their data. An attorney who knows privacy law is the right person to confirm that.

Whether you need a banner

Two laws come up most often for US businesses on Wix.

The first is the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The EU says it can apply to a company outside the EU that offers goods or services to people in the EU or monitors their behavior. Wix's help pages cite fines of up to EUR 20 million or 4% of annual turnover, whichever is greater, and treat countries covered by GDPR as places where visitors must consent before tracking starts.

The second is the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA. It works differently: it focuses on a visitor's right to know what is collected, to delete it, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information. It applies only to for-profit businesses that do business in California and meet one of several revenue or data-volume thresholds, which the California Attorney General's CCPA page lists. Other states have their own laws.

There is also a practical reason that has nothing to do with fines. Wix states that if a visitor comes from a country that requires consent and your site has no banner, "no data is sent to Google Analytics".

What Wix's banner is today

Wix partnered with Usercentrics, a consent management company, to supply the banner. Wix describes it as including "anytime site scans, translation in up to 60 languages" and Google Consent Mode v2 support.

If your site was built a few years ago, you may have the previous tool, the Wix Cookie Banner. Wix no longer offers it for new sites. Sites where it's already active keep collecting consent with it and can still customize it, so nothing breaks, but new setup instructions all refer to the Usercentrics version.

How to add the banner

1. Go to Privacy & Cookies in your site's dashboard.
2. Click Add to Site next to "Add a cookie consent banner".
3. Click Agree & Add.
4. Open Cookie Consent Banner in the dashboard to manage it, and turn it on with the Show banner toggle.
5. Run Website Scan to list the Wix and third-party components on your site and the type of cookie each one uses.
6. Link your privacy policy. All users can do this.

Two things confuse people at this point. The banner can't be seen in the editor or in Preview mode, so check the live site. And if the domain isn't properly connected, the banner won't appear at all. Wix's steps are in its cookie banner article.

The "privacy trigger" is the collapsed button visitors click to reopen the banner and change their choice.

What's free and what's paid

Wix says "the basic version of the Usercentrics cookie banner is free to use and fully GDPR-compliant". That compliance statement is Wix's wording about the product, not a guarantee about your site. Extra features need a monthly or yearly Usercentrics plan, and Usercentrics offers a 14-day trial. Wix's help pages don't list the plan prices, so check them in the upgrade screen before you decide.

What the banner blocks until consent

Without an active banner, Wix says "all cookies and scripts are loaded when a visitor first enters your site". With one, only the essential category loads. The rest wait until the visitor clicks Accept All or switches on individual categories.

Some visible elements are affected too. With the Enable placeholders setting on, embedded items such as Google Maps, video players, Spotify players and social buttons stay hidden behind a placeholder until the visitor accepts the relevant cookies. That is why a map can seem to vanish after you add the banner.

The other advanced setting, Resurface, forces the banner to reappear for everyone.

What the banner does not control

This is the part that site owners most often miss.

• Third-party apps. For apps from the Wix App Market that aren't made by Wix, Wix says it "cannot guarantee" they are blocked before consent. Check each app's own privacy settings.
• Custom code. Wix's rule is: "Custom codes are categorized as essential by default. This means that the code is loaded prior to visitor consent and cannot be disabled." Any chat widget, heatmap or ad script you pasted into Custom Code runs before consent until you change its category.
• Your dashboard. Dashboard pages aren't integrated with the banner.

To fix the custom code gap, go to Settings → Custom Code, open each snippet, and on the Code Type tab choose Essential, Marketing, Analytic or Functional. Wix states that this is the owner's responsibility. Its custom code categories article explains each one. Developers working in Velo, Wix's coding platform, can connect their code to Wix's Consent API.

For account security, see our Wix security guide.

Google Consent Mode v2 on Wix

Consent mode is Google's system for passing a visitor's choice to Google's tags. In Google's words, it "lets you communicate your users' cookie or app identifier consent status to Google. Tags adjust their behavior and respect users' choices." Google's consent mode documentation lists the consent types, which include ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization.

Wix states that the Usercentrics for Wix banner "is supported for Google Consent Mode v2". If you connected Google Analytics through the Google Tag integration, as described in our guide to Google Analytics 4 on Wix, the banner holds that tag back until the visitor consents.

Google Tag Manager is different. Wix says consent mode must be enabled inside your container: Admin → Container Settings → Additional Settings → Enable consent overview. Then, in Tags, you set Google tags to "No additional consent required" and non-Google tags to "Require additional consent for tag to fire" with the matching category. The steps are in Wix's consent mode for Tag Manager article, and the wider setup is in Google Tag Manager on Wix.

One limit on what we can tell you: Wix's help pages don't list exactly which consent signals the banner sends to Google. If your ad campaigns depend on a specific signal, confirm it by testing your live site before relying on it.

What happens to your analytics and ad data

Expect a drop in reported numbers the day the banner goes live. Your real traffic hasn't changed.

• Google Analytics collects only after a visitor approves the relevant cookies. Wix calls the resulting drop normal.
• Wix Analytics is gated too. Wix says traffic and behavior reports "will be partial".
• The Meta Pixel doesn't load until the visitor consents to marketing cookies. See Meta Pixel and Conversions API on Wix.
• Ad integrations lose reporting accuracy, as Wix's own list of trade-offs notes.

Wix offers a rule of thumb: "approximately 50% of visitors accept cookies, so if you have a Cookie Consent banner, it's fair to assume your traffic data should be doubled." Treat that as a rough estimate. Note the date you turned the banner on, so nobody later mistakes the step down for a real loss. Our guide to why traffic dropped on your Wix site covers how to tell the two apart.

The consent log, Do Not Sell link and data requests

Wix has three related tools under Privacy & Cookies. Only the site owner can open the privacy settings; collaborators can't.

Consent log

Consent given through the banner and the Do Not Sell link is logged automatically with the IP address, device, date and time, and categories. To download it, go to Privacy & Cookies → Visitor Data → Consent Log → Export, pick a time frame, and you get a CSV file. Consent handled by social tools, third-party apps and custom code is not in the log.

Do Not Sell link

For CCPA, Wix can add a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link. In Privacy & Cookies, find "Add a 'Do Not Sell Data' Link", click Add Link in Editor, add it to the site and publish. Wix recommends placing it in the footer. California's Attorney General describes the required link as "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information", so ask your attorney whether Wix's wording is enough for you.

Data access and deletion requests

When a customer asks for a copy of their data or asks you to delete it, go to Privacy & Cookies → Visitor data → Data request → + New Request. Choose "Get a copy of their data" or "Delete their data" and enter the customer's email or phone exactly as it appears in your contact list. Wix says you receive the file, or the deletion is done, "within 48 hours". Wix doesn't email the customer. Sending the file and confirming the deletion is your job.

The request covers contact details, activities, orders and invoices. It does not cover data held by third-party apps, custom code, or outside services such as Google Analytics or the Meta Pixel. You have to handle those separately.

Using a different consent platform

Some businesses already pay for another consent management platform and want it on every site they run. Wix's help pages document only the Usercentrics banner and the older Wix banner. They don't describe how a different platform would interact with the way Wix holds back its integrations.

If you go that route, the platform's script would be custom code, which Wix doesn't support, and you would need to test carefully that Google Analytics, the Meta Pixel and your other tags actually wait for consent. For most Wix sites, the built-in banner is the lower-risk choice.

Conclusion

On Wix, a working consent setup is the Usercentrics banner switched on, every custom code snippet assigned to the right category, third-party apps checked individually, and consent mode enabled in Tag Manager if you use it. Then confirm it on the live site in a private window, and have an attorney review your policy and banner wording. If you'd like the technical side checked, including what loads before consent, our Wix website services team can review it. More guides are in our Wix hub.

Frequently asked questions