Comparing beauty

With the arrival of the internet in virtually every home (and virtually on every phone too), consumers have become increasingly demanding as they realise the diversity of products available. Retailers have also stepped up to the plate, competing to offer the best prices and free gifts. This has also created problems for consumers: when buying online, how can you be sure that you're ordering from a genuine retailer and won't end up with a fake? How can you get the best price without wading through hundreds of web pages? And how can you know which products are right for you when shopping online, since you can't try before you buy?

the beauty biography page

Price comparison websites go some way to solving these problems, but they can't do it all. So, again, websites are needing to up their game in order to attract consumers. MyBeautyCompare is one of them, touting itself as the Match.com for beauty. It doesn't just want women to get the best price, but also to help modern, busy women find the right products for them.

New visitors to the site are invited to click on "find your beauty match", which is a button located on the web page's top left-hand corner. This leads newbies to complete the beauty biography, which asks questions about eye colour, hair type, skin concerns and more. This is quite detailed, although still quick to fill out. A few other important questions could also be asked without it taking too much more of users' time, such as body skin type or concerns (I have largely oily skin, for example, but suffer horribly with dry skin on my feet, meaning it doesn't make sense to treat my whole body as if it has the same skin type).

my recommended eye treatments

Once the beauty bio is complete, you are sent an email to activate your membership (which is free, but obligatory). Confusingly, once you have activated your membership, the "find your beauty match" button disappears. Your next step, therefore, is to select a product category in order to find your best product matches. This shows a few things: firstly, all of the products available to buy online, using MyBeautyCompare as an agent. You can narrow this down by selecting a further category on the left-hand side of the page (e.g., under 'cleansers', you can select a skin concern, such as hyperpigmentation). However, this does not mean that all of your work filling out the beauty bio at the beginning is in vain: at the top of the page are the four top products in that category, as recommended for your specific concerns. The price range of these four products is quite wide: for my skin type, for example, the four products ranged from Simple to Decleor (with prices starting at £3.80 and going as high as nearly £23). However, clicking on one of the products led to an error message, suggesting that some aspects of this site still need to be tweaked.

buy now!

When you do click on a product with a working page, though, the information is concise and has great potential, showing reviews, price comparisons (which shows the full cost of the item to you, including postage), and complementary products from the same brand as the product selected (NB not 'complimentary', as spelt on the website, which means something else entirely). While the range of retailers selling through the site perhaps need to be widened (I know for a fact that Dermalogica does not only sell through one website, for example), the whole set-up still strikes me as being very convenient: clicking the bright pink button that says 'Buy Now' takes you directly to the website offering you the price you're happiest with.

The range of products being offered is vast: there are more than 400 exfoliators (that's exfoliatOrs, not exfoliatErs, as MyBeautyCompare would have you believe!) on sale, for example. You can also narrow these numerous offerings down by price, as well as sorting them alphabetically, by ascending or descending cost, by popularity, or by those with the best reviews. There is also a completely separate category of the site for product reviews, which are written by site members, and which again are available in vast numbers and can be narrowed down by brand, key word, or even specific product. 

the homepage

This range of products can be accessed easily from the home page (or indeed any other) thanks to the chunky black toolbar at the top of the screen. The home page also offers direct links to best-selling brands (which vary from the most famous, such as Clinique, to the more niche, such as Matrix), links to latest forum posts and product reviews, and access to the site's blog, video tutorials, expert tips, offers, and treatments. These elements of the site also need to be made accessible from the main black toolbar so that users can reach them immediately from any page that they are on. Some of the homepage images appear to have been made cheaply, but other elements of the site are good: the blog in particular is clearly archived and categorised, and offers comments and hints on a range of topics of interest.

the slightly inactive forum

Finally, the site forum allows users to interact with each other on beauty-related topics. The forum seems well-organised, with members able to sort their queries by product type and category (for example, under the Hair section, there are fora for colour, styling and frizzy hair) as well as being able to chat off-topic in the Beauty Lounge. The fora in general are not highly-used currently, racking up only single-digit numbers of topics and replies in most cases. However, this will likely improve as the site racks up more users.

Any beauty addict would therefore do well to have this site bookmarked for the best hints, recommendations, and prices, so as to carry on staying on top of what's hot and where to buy it.