What are cookies?

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are small files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the website's functionality.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies for a variety of reasons, detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

disable cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Please note that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this website. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

Cookies we install

Account related cookies

If you create an account with us then we will use cookies to manage the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out of the system but in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.

Connection related cookies

We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this action. This saves you from having to log in every time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

Cookies related to email newsletters

This website offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which would only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

Orders processing associated cookies

This website offers e-commerce or payment facilities and some cookies are essential to ensure that your order is remembered between pages so that we can process it properly.

Cookies related to surveys

From time to time, we offer surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting information, useful tools, or to better understand our user base. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already participated in a survey or to provide accurate results after you change pages.

Forms related cookies

When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember user details for future correspondence.

Site Preference Cookies

To provide you with a great experience on this website we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this website runs when you use it. To remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page affected by your preferences.

Third-party cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details the third-party cookies you may encounter through this website.

This website uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the website and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

For more information about Google Analytics cookies, visit the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this website so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or the pages that you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the look and feel of the site. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst understanding which optimisations our users appreciate most.

When we sell products it is important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our website actually purchase, and so this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important for you as it means we can make accurate business predictions which allow us to analyse our advertising and product costs to ensure you get the best possible price.

The Google AdSense service we use to serve ads uses a DoubleClick cookie to serve more relevant ads across the web and to limit the number of times you see a particular ad.

For more information about AdSense, see the official AdSense Privacy FAQ.

We use adverts to offset the costs of running this site and to fund future developments. The behavioural advertising cookies used by this website are designed to ensure that you are provided with the most relevant adverts where possible, by anonymously tracking your interests and presenting similar items that may be of interest to you.

Various partners advertise on our behalf and affiliate tracking cookies simply allow us to see if our customers have reached the site through one of our partners' websites so that we can credit them correctly and where applicable allow our affiliate partners to offer any promotions that they may provide to you for making a purchase.