Online shops enable cosmoholics to explore a wide range of makeup selections. As an example, you can buy a lipstick that is unavailable in your region, and thus it enhances your individual beauty. If you run out of a product in one store, you can always move to other stores by a simple swipe.
Regardless of the advantages, online cosmetic sales have some downsides too. Counterfeit products are plenty. You may also find scammers who do not ship your goods. Buying makeup products from online stores require some training first.
Securing Your Payment
Unsuspecting shoppers often give away their credit card details without precaution. Bogus sites, hackers, or spyware programs can steal valuable information and use it to their advantage. You can end up with purchases you never made.
You have two options for buying beauty products online. First, you can sign up for a membership on the official website. Second, you can buy from retails. This option is widely preferred because retails sell varieties of imported products with shipment cost that is cheaper than importing the goods directly from the official store.
Retails usually use Amazon.com, Shopify.com, Rakuten.com, and Bonanza.com to sell their products. And for you, it is way safer to shop from those e-commerce platforms than to buy goods from a social media account. Trading through Instagram is a thing now, but the seller’s credibility is hardly verifiable.
Be suspicious if you are directed to a non-familiar web during a payment process. It may be a fake site that is engineered specifically to steal your bank account information. Your safest option will be paying through payment platforms such as PayPal, Google Wallet, Skrill, and Authorize.Net.
Collecting Bonuses
Internet marketing these days includes a lot of discounts and coupons. Some brands like ColourPop, Tarte Cosmetics, and Makeup Geek collaborated with social media influencers, and they gave out bonuses to any customers who followed the campaign. Recently, Avon also launched a similar strategy. You can check out Avon Online Brochure, and you can find special products there with discounted price.
Official stores often give bonuses in two ways. First, they grant discounts to new members. Second, they offer limited products with a special price to a recruiting member. If you manage to ask a friend to join your cosmoholic club, you are more than just a customer to the cosmetic companies, you are a valued member.
Spotting the Fakes
With today’s technology, spotting fake products from pictures is nearly impossible. Only the originality of cosmetic products that have QR codes is easy to trace. But for the others, you should do a little work of investigation.
First, you should check the reputation of your selected store. If you use an e-commerce platform, the rating system already gives everything you need. But if you shop somewhere else, you should read reviews from accountable forums like MakeupAlley.com, Makeuptalk.com, and Beauty Threads on Reddit. Besides spotting scammers, you can also read testimonies on new products. Those places will be your best place to do little digital research.