Installing the Privacy Center on your website

Installing the Privacy Center adds your Dataships-hosted privacy portal and a cookie consent banner to your website. Once installed, shoppers can access your privacy policy and manage their consent, and the cookie banner will automatically appear for new visitors.

Installation involves pasting three short snippets into your website. No developer is required for most website builders — if you can edit your site's HTML, you can do this yourself.

Finding the installation page

In your Dataships dashboard, go to Privacy Center in the left sidebar, then click the Website Installation tab.

You'll see three numbered sections, each with a pre-generated snippet specific to your account and a Copy code button.

The three snippets and what they do

• Privacy Center header script — Loads the underlying Dataships library that powers your Privacy Center. This goes in the header of your Privacy Center page.
• Privacy Center body script — Renders the Privacy Center itself on the page. This goes in the body of your Privacy Center page, at the point where you want the portal to appear.
• Cookie script — Displays the cookie consent banner when visitors arrive on your website. This goes on every page of your site, not just the Privacy Center page.

Step-by-step installation

Step 1 — Add the header script to your Privacy Center page

Click Copy code next to the Privacy Center Header Script. Open your website editor and navigate to the page where your Privacy Center will live. Paste the snippet into the header section of that page. In most website builders, this is labelled "Custom code — head" or "Header HTML."

Step 2 — Add the body script to your Privacy Center page

Click Copy code next to the Privacy Center Body Script. On the same Privacy Center page, paste this snippet into the body of the page — the main content area where you want the portal to display. This is what your shoppers will actually see and interact with.

Step 3 — Add the cookie script to every page

Click Copy code next to the Dataships Cookie Script. This snippet needs to be added to all pages on your website, not just the Privacy Center page. Most website builders let you do this in a global "footer code" or "all pages" section so you only need to paste it once.

After pasting

Save your changes in your website builder and visit the live site to confirm everything is working:

• Navigate to your Privacy Center page — you should see the portal rendered correctly with your branding.
• Open a fresh browser window (or use incognito mode) and visit any page — the cookie consent banner should appear.

If the portal or banner isn't showing, double-check that all three snippets are saved and that the cookie script is present on the page you're testing.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work with any website builder?

It works with any website builder that lets you add custom HTML to your pages — including Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and WordPress. The exact location of the custom code fields varies by platform, but they're usually found in page settings or theme settings under labels like "Custom code," "Header," or "Inject scripts."

Do I need a developer to install this?

Most merchants can do this without any development experience. If you're comfortable editing your site's settings and pasting text into a field, you have everything you need. If your website is highly customised or you're not sure where to paste the snippets, a developer can complete this in a few minutes.

What does the cookie script do?

The cookie script displays a consent banner when a new visitor arrives on your website, letting them accept or manage cookie preferences. It needs to run on every page because cookies can be set from any page — not just your Privacy Center. Adding it globally ensures every visitor is covered from the moment they land on your site.