For all your beauty needs (beautybay.com)

Member Name: glitter_princess

Product:	beautybay.com
Date:	31/03/09 (169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good prices, good range of products, super speedy delivery, cashback option

Disadvantages: Photos not always clear but can be enlarged

When it comes to buying cosmetics, despite my large collection, I rarely have the time to physically head into a shop to buy them, instead preferring to do most of my shopping online. My old first stop for makeup had always been hqhair.com, but when they stopped offering cashback, and I began to find that their prices had started creeping up, I decided to have a look around for alternatives and that was where I first came across beautybay.com.

Beautybay.com stocks many of the same brands as hqhair, including Bare Escentuals, Becca, Stila, Nails Inc, Urban Decay, Blinc, DuWop, and ModelCo. The site uses an attractive purple and white colour scheme and is nicely uncluttered, easy to browse and runs quickly with no waiting for things to load. You can shop by brand, or you can browse by types of item - the site is divided into haircare, makeup, skincare, fragrance, accessories, and mens. The front page of each section shows a few 'editors picks' and you can then further browse by the brands which are listed down the left hand side.

Obviously makeup is my favourite section - the range of brands is pretty good and the prices are reasonable (not showing massive reductions compared to buying direct from the manufacturer, but for the most part at a slight discount). My most recent order included a Blinc mascara (fab stuff - really innovative and puts little silicone tubes around your lashes that just slide off to remove) and Bare Escentuals foundation. Perhaps you'd like some DuWop lip venom to pucker up your pout, or maybe some YSL Touch Eclat to hide your dark circles? Each product shows a small picture of the product - these aren't always the best quality and sometimes a little fuzzy, but you can enlarge the picture to get a better look and that picture looks far clearer. There are a couple of sentences of product description for each item and the price is clearly displayed, as well as showing you whether the item is in stock or not (if it's in stock the item will usually be dispatched on the same day), as well as information on the brand itself, and any customer reviews. Customer reviews are fairly thin on the ground at the moment, but hopefully as the site takes off they will build on this.

The hair care section is also well stocked, with brands like MOP, Tigi, Bedhead, Matrix, redken, Paul Mitchell, Fudge, GHD and many more. Highlights of the skincare section include MD Formulations, This Works, Skin Doctors, Nude, and Murad. The accessories range includes Tweezerman, Tangle Teezer, as well as lots of ranges of makeup brushes. The only range that I find noticeably missing compared to hqhair is Benefit, but it's a range that is easy enough to get hold of elsewhere so it's not too much of an issue!

Ordering is pain free - when you choose to add an item to your bag a pop up will appear asking you to confirm and informing you that the item will be added and pointing you towards your checkout which you can see at the top of the screen, giving you a running total of your bill. When you click on the checkout you can view all of the items in your bag, remove any you've changed your mind about, select the delivery method you want and any gift box options, then proceed to the payment stage. They accept all the major credit cards, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Maestro.

The delivery is a big seller for me. I placed my order at 12.00pm and it was dispatched at 15.00 the same day, with an email to confirm it had been sent out. You can't say better than that! I received it 2 days later which for standard delivery is pretty impressive. Standard delivery (1st class) for orders under £60 is £2.50 (which I think is reasonable), 1st class recorded is £3.50, and next day delivery is £7.95 (pretty steep when you consider the speed of their standard delivery!) They also offer free returns for UK orders, as long as items are unopened and unused and returned within 14 days. In my opinion this is key for an online makeup store, as colour swatches aren't always accurate and you never really know exactly what a colour will look like once you get it in front of you. They also make it easy for you to contact their customer service team through a Contact Us section, and you can get in touch using phone, email or post.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with beautybay, and it's certainly a site I will use again in future and one that I hope continues to expand its range of products. The 7.5% cashback offered through cashbackkings is also a big bonus for me!

Summary: A great site for all beauty addicts