This policy explains the cookies and similar technologies we use, what each one is for, and how to turn off the ones that are optional. It supplements our privacy policy and our POPIA notice.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to store. On a later visit the browser hands it back, which is how a site remembers that your basket has three items in it, or that you are signed in. Related technologies — pixels, local storage, SDKs — do much the same job by different means, and this policy covers those too.
Cookies set by this site are first-party. Cookies set by a service we embed are third-party, and those services have their own privacy policies, linked below.
The categories we use
Strictly necessary
These make the site work. They keep your basket, carry you through checkout, keep you signed in, balance traffic across servers and block fraudulent and automated activity. They do not track you across other websites and they cannot be switched off, because without them the store does not function.
Set by: Shopify (store, cart, checkout, sessions, bot protection); Stripe, for payment fraud checks.
Preferences
These remember choices you have made — your country and market, your language, whether you chose light or dark, and whether you have dismissed a banner. Losing them is an annoyance rather than a breakage.
Analytics
These tell us how the site is used in aggregate: which pages are read, where people give up, whether a change we made helped. We use them to fix what is not working. Where we can, we configure them to collect less rather than more.
Set by: Shopify Analytics; Google Analytics; Microsoft Clarity, which records how pages are used so we can see where a layout is failing people; Analyzify, which attributes a sale to the campaign that led to it.
Marketing
These measure whether our advertising reached anyone and let us show ads to people who have visited us. This is the category most people mean when they object to cookies, and it is the category you can decline with no loss of function.
Set by: Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Pixel; Google Ads; Microsoft Advertising; Snapchat; Pinterest; X, formerly Twitter; Klaviyo, for email personalisation and to know whether a message was opened.
Functional third parties
Services that run alongside the store: Avada, which manages our SEO metadata and prefetches pages so they open faster; and our cart free-gift app, which remembers which gift your basket qualifies for. Adobe Fonts serves our typefaces and sets no cookie of its own.
What we do not do
The Dermal Diagnosis assessment runs on our own infrastructure — there is no third-party form provider involved, and no advertising or analytics service receives your answers. We do not use cookies to record what you told us about your skin. The Dermal Diagnosis assessment result is stored against a private reference, not in a marketing cookie, and it is not used to target advertising to you. We do not sell cookie data.
To be plain about when these are set. Our analytics and marketing cookies are set when you arrive, not after a prompt. South African law does not require us to ask first, and we would rather say that than imply a consent step this site does not have. You can decline them at any time using the controls below, and declining costs you nothing but slightly less relevant advertising.
Your choices
On this site. We do not show a cookie banner, so there is no switch to set here. Declining is done in your browser or with the advertiser, as below — and it restricts nothing you can buy or read.
In your browser. Every major browser lets you block or delete cookies, and blocking third-party cookies is usually a single setting. Blocking strictly necessary cookies will break the basket and checkout.
With the advertiser. Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snapchat, Pinterest and X each provide ad preference controls inside your account with them, and published opt-out pages for people without one.
How long they last
Session cookies are deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies last for a set period — typically from a few days for a basket to around two years for an analytics identifier — or until you delete them.
Changes
We update this policy when the services embedded in the site change. The date at the top of the page tells you when it last changed.
Questions
Email info@dermalhealth.co.za and we will tell you exactly what is set and why.