Skin Care Tips: Online Product Shopping Check List

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 http://www.Skin-Care--Tips.com? skin care tips [Publish this article on your website! Requirement: live link for above URL/web address w/ link text/anchor text: "skin care tips" OR leave this bracketed message intact.]

Written by: Joel Walsh