What are cookies?

• As is common practice with almost all professional websites the Ashwood Therapy site uses cookies, which are small text files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your browsing experience.  This page describes what information they gather, how the site uses that information and why it is sometimes necessary to store these cookies.  This page will also let you know how you can prevent these cookies from being stored, however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the site's functionality.  For more general information on cookies see this Wikipedia article on Cookies.

How this site uses cookies

• This site 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 all cookies enabled if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use on the Ashwood Therapy site.  Please note, all messages sent through the secure online contact form and assessment and application forms are encrypted and none of your message content, your name or your contact details are stored in a cookie by the site.

Disabling cookies

• You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your Internet browser (see your browser ‘Help’ function for how to do this).  Please be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality and features of the Ashwood Therapy website and many other websites that you visit.  It is therefore recommended that you do not disable cookies, so that you get the best possible browsing experience.

The cookies that are set

• The Ashwood Therapy site uses cookies provided by trusted third parties.  The following section details which cookies you might encounter through using the site.

• This site uses Google Analytics, which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping to understand how you use the site and ways in which your experience can be improved.  These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit, so the Ashwood Therapy site can continue to produce engaging content.  For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

• The Ashwood Therapy website uses Hotjar in order to better understand visitor needs and to optimise the website content and your experience.  Hotjar is a technology service that helps Ashwood Therapy better understand your experience (e.g. how much time you spend on which pages, which links you choose to click, what you do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables Ashwood Therapy to build and maintain the website with user feedback.  Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on your behaviour and your devices (in particular a device's IP address (captured and stored only in anonymised form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display the website).  Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymised user profile.  Neither Hotjar nor Ashwood Therapy will ever use this information to identify you as an individual user or to match it with further data on you as an individual user.  For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy.  You can opt-out of Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of the Ashwood Therapy site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following the instructions at this Do Not Track page.

• Other third party analytics services may be used to track and measure usage of this site so that the Ashwood Therapy site can continue to produce content relevant for visitors. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps to give an insight into how the site can be improved for you.

• From time to time new features on the Ashwood Therapy site are tested, and this can mean there are subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered.  When new content is being evaluated on the site cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent browsing experience whilst enabling Ashwood Therapy to understand which optimisations users appreciate the most.

• As the Ashwood Therapy site provides access to certain products, it's important to understand the statistics about how visitors to the site go about making a purchase or submitting an enquiry, and as such this is the kind of data that some cookies will track.  This is relevant to you as it means development decisions can be made in order to present future products in the most convenient way.

• The Ashwood Therapy site also uses social media buttons and / or plug-ins that allow you to connect with your social networks in various ways.  For these to work the following social media sites (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest) may set cookies through the Ashwood Therapy site which may be used to contribute to the data they hold for various purposes which are outlined in their respective privacy policies on their websites.

More information

• Hopefully this page will have answered many of your questions about the cookies set on the Ashwood Therapy site, and why they are used.  As previously mentioned, if you are unsure as to whether or not to disable cookies on this site, it's usually better to leave cookies enabled in case they interact with one of the features you use. If you do have any queries or questions, do please get in touch via the secure online contact form.