What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file stored by your web browser on your computer or mobile device’s hard drive. Some cookies are essential for our websites to work, for example to remember what you have added to your basket while you browse the site. They are useful because they help us to provide you with relevant information, such as remembering what you have in your wish list or basket when you return to our site. They also allow us to improve the way our website works.

We also use cookies in some of our emails. They help us to understand a little bit about how you interact with our emails, and are used to improve our future email communications.

If you have configured your computer to automatically display images, or if you have added us to your email “address book” (or “safe senders” list), or if you have configured your computer to have “weak” security, cookies might be set at the same time as you download, open or read an email from us. If you would prefer for this not to happen, you should disable the automatic displaying of images, or remove us from your address book or strengthen your security settings.

Types of cookies

Session cookies are deleted after each ‘session’. When you are browsing our website(s), it will save information about your activity for the duration of your visit, but the cookie will be deleted from your computer as soon as you close your browser. Without a session cookie, each item you place in your shopping basket will disappear by the time you reach the checkout.

Persistent cookies remember you for a set period of time unless you delete your cookies within this period. On your first visit to our site, you will see the default version of the site. When you return, the site may have changed, as persistent cookies remember items you have viewed and whether you logged into or out of your account while on the site.

Our emails contain a number of hyperlinks, each of which has a unique tag. When you click on one of these links you will be automatically redirected to the server of our mailing company which logs the click. From there you will be redirected to the relevant page on our website. This process enables us to understand who has clicked through from an email to visit our website. We use this information to tailor future messages to you.

Third party cookies – Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to better understand how customers use our website, how they navigate and how often they return to our site. We use this data to improve the usability of our website. Google Analytics uses cookies to track on-site conversions. All this data is anonymous. View Google’s Privacy Policy.

Turning off and deleting cookies

To stop cookies being placed on your computer, change your browser settings to either reject all cookies; to only allow “trusted sites” or only accept cookies from the site(s) you are currently on. You can disable cookies on your computer by changing the preferences or options menus in your browser. Instructions for disallowing cookies can usually be found in the browser’s ‘Help’ menu. However, some parts of our website will not operate correctly if you disable cookies.

For more detailed information about cookies and how to control them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Here are details of the cookies used on our site: