Whether you’re looking to stock up your back bar or addressing a specific skin issue, shopping for skin care products can be a particularly tricky experience. Most people just stick to the products they know and trust, rarely venturing out of their comfort zone for fear of getting burned by an expensive product that doesn’t do what it claims to.
While this conservative approach to skincare shopping is understandable, there’s no reason it should always be the case. If you have the right tools and an understanding of what to look out for when you begin your shopping journey, you can easily avoid the pitfalls associated with lending your trust to a new product.
Take this list of the most common mistakes people tend to make when skincare shopping and start buying with confidence!
1. Overlooking Ingredients
When it comes to skincare, doing a bit of research before you buy can make all the difference. It’s simple to just take the product’s word for it, but sometimes the packaging can’t be trusted.
A HUGE red flag for any skincare product is if they either hide the ingredients or make them extremely hard to read. Any skincare product worth its salt displays its ingredients loud and proud, begging you to look them up and verify their efficacy.
There are tons of resources on the internet (including ours) detailing the effects of every ingredient out there, so do yourself a favor and Google before you buy.
2. Accepting a Bargain at Face Value
There is 100% not a direct correlation between the price of a skincare product and its quality.
That being said, more often than not if you look for bargain bin skincare, you’re going to get bargain bin results. There’s nothing wrong with being a discretionary buyer and looking out for a good deal, but that doesn’t mean you should compromise when it comes to the health of your skin. After all, you don’t want to take a chance and end up with the gas station sushi equivalent of skincare.
The best strategy when looking for a skincare bargain is to closely follow the social media accounts of the skincare companies you trust, as well as the retailers that carry them and keep an eye out for a sale.
3. Not Knowing Your Skin Type
One of the easiest mistakes to make is taking a friend’s recommendation on a skincare product and not stopping to consider what their skin type is compared to yours. Most products are designed to cater to specific types of skin – i.e. dry, oily, combination, sensitive, or normal – so choosing the wrong type could be problematic for your skin.
If you don’t know your skin type, there are resources online that can help you narrow it down. However, it’s best to consult with a dermatologist to determine exactly what type of skin you have and how you can treat it most effectively.
4. Not Checking For Results
When you’re shopping for skincare products, the biggest leap of faith you take is not knowing for sure whether the product will be effective. But, if you’re shopping online, you have a valuable resource at your disposal: other customers.
If a product really works, you can usually find testimonials and before and after photos proving as much. Skin care companies often show off dramatic before and after shots, but the most reliably honest sources come from satisfied customers who are so happy with the product they are compelled to post their results via social media.
5. Not Knowing the Source
One of the problems with shopping online is it can be hard to really trace back where the product is coming from to its source. This not only brings up a host of problems with giant online retailers, it also makes it tougher than ever to spot a scam before it’s too late.
That’s why you should try to only shop at authorized sellers with solid reputations and clear return policies. If not, you never know where your products are coming from or whether they’ve been stored and shipped properly.
If you look out for these 5 missteps and do some research before you buy, you’re far more likely to be satisfied when you buy. Or, you could save a ton of time and just get all your skincare shopping done at LiraClinical.com or one of our authorized sellers! Either way.
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