Customer Journey
CONCEPT
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The complete lifecycle sequence of interactions, touchpoints, and decisions a buyer experiences with a business brand.
CONCEPT
SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
Website Cookies
Small name–value records that a web server asks a user agent to store and return with eligible HTTP requests to maintain state.
BUSINESS RELEVANCE
Cookies enable essential session and personalisation functions and can support measurement, but their use affects privacy, consent, security, vendor governance, and analytics reliability.
IMPLEMENTATION EXAMPLE
An application stores a random session identifier in a Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite cookie, keeps sensitive account data server-side, rotates the identifier after login, and applies consent controls to non-essential analytics cookies.
LIMITATIONS
Cookies can be stolen, leaked, blocked, deleted, or used for intrusive tracking. They have size and scope limits, cross-site availability is declining, and consent does not replace data minimisation or secure design.
TECHNICAL EXPLANATION
Servers set cookies through Set-Cookie; browsers return matching values in Cookie according to domain, path, expiry, Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite, and other rules. Cookies may support sessions, preferences, security, analytics, or advertising and may be first-party or third-party by context.
Secondary Topics
Cybersecurity, Data Engineering, Performance Advertising
Sources
IETF RFC 6265 — HTTP State Management Mechanism — https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265; OWASP — Session Management Cheat Sheet — https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Session_Management_Cheat_Sheet.html
Related terms
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
CONCEPT
SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
The core networking protocol facilitating request-and-response data communications across the global World Wide Web.
301 Redirect
CONCEPT
SEARCH OPTIMIZATION
Permanent HTTP 301 redirects preserve search equity and guide user journeys during URL changes, migrations, and site restructuring.
Wireframe
CONCEPT
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
A basic visual blueprint depicting page layout, content hierarchy, and interface functional elements without final styling.
AI Agent
CONCEPT
AI GOVERNANCE
Autonomous software that perceives environmental context, reasons over objectives, and leverages tools to complete complex tasks.