There are so many good skin care products online,
you'd be missing out if you didn't look into buying your products via the
web. But, as with everything on the web, it's buyer beware: there's plenty
of junk thrown in with the good stuff. Here's what to look for and what to
look out for:
Skin Care Tips on Product
Price.
Don't fall for the typical website trick of
providing a low purchase price and then tacking on a substantial shipping and
handling fee--or offering free shipping but then charging a "handling" or
"processing" fee.
Skin Product Size
Any
product listing has to say, at bare minimum, how many grams, ounces, or CCs the
product contains.
· However,
it should also give you some idea of how many uses you will get out of the
product. Ten ounces of one product might last 30 days, while ten ounces of
another might barely last the week.
· If
the product listing doesn't provide this information, it should at least say how
much is a recommended dose, and how much to use per day or week. Then
simply divide the total size of the product by the usage size to get an
idea. For instance, if you need to use half an ounce of product per day, a
16-ounce container will likely last a month.
Skin Care Products'
Ingredients
At bare minimum, the product listing should show
all the ingredients listed on the actual product label, both active ingredients
(the ingredient that actually performs whatever treatment the product is
supposed to provide), as well as inactive ingredients (ingredients used for
filler, textures, scents, and other materials that are only there to help sell
the product rather than fulfill its mission).
The site should also explain in plain English what
each ingredient does. You should do a quick web search on one or two of
the ingredients you don't recognize, to see if the product listing's explanation
of what the ingredient is accurate or if it's distorted.
For instance, companies sometimes try to give the
impression that ingredients that are really only used as colorants or
preservatives provide some skin care benefit. They do this to mask the
fact that the essential active ingredient in the product may be the same as
dozens of other products on the market.
Guarantees
Don't take any guarantees at face value until
you've checked them out. A money-back guarantee may hide the fact that it
would simply be too much expense or trouble to return the product.
For instance, if the price of the product is ten
dollars plus five dollars shipping and handling, and the money-back guarantee
requires you to ship back the unused portion to get it, you will have spent five
dollars on shipping, meaning you are only really getting five dollars
back. Then of course there's the original shipping and handling fee, which
is often not included in the money-back guarantee.
Faced with putting the gunk back in the jar,
repacking it, mailing it back, and waiting for a meager refund, many people will
simply give up--the money-back guarantees of many sub-par products depend on
this phenomenon.
In short, if the money-back guarantee
requires you to return the unused product and/or does not cover the original
shipping and handling fee, it's not much of a guarantee.
About the author: Joel Walsh is a
contributing author to skin care tips : http://www.skin-care--tips.com
