Beauty bay keeps my hair beautiful (beautybay.com)

Member Name: stillclueless

Product:	beautybay.com
Date:	29/04/09 (147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to navigate, competitive pricing, wide selection of products

Disadvantages: N/A

Ok, so, set the scene, you've run out of your favourite hair care product that you normally only buy from your hairdresser, and let's be honest, you buy the product at a ridiculously overpriced rate, and have only recently begun to take notice of how much money you're spending because of the global credit crunch, so you start to look at ways to save money. I find that I save a lot of money purely by searching for my favourite products on-line. There are so many stores to choose from and you can get everything you could ever need or want from at least one online retailer. You save money on petrol and parking as an added bonus and don't have to spend endless amounts of time standing in queues or trudging around shops to find the perfect product for your needs.

Beautybay.com is one such online retailer that can save you a lot of time looking for a variety of beauty products, some of which aren't that easy to find on the high street and some of which when you do find them are ridiculously overpriced. Now I'm not going to claim to be an expert on purchasing beauty products from beauty bay as I have only used the online shop a couple of times but my aim is to provide you with my honest 1st impressions of this one stop shop for beauty products.

***ABOUT BEAUTYBAY.COM***
Beautybay.com is one of those online retailers that specialises in hair care, skin care, fragrances, accessories and even male grooming products, with a wide variety to choose from and competitive pricing. The site is very basic but well laid out and easy to navigate. The colour scheme used is purple white and what looks to be some form of green colour. There is a bar along the top that allows you to navigate to the appropriate product range you are looking for in the following categories

1. Hair Care
2. Skin Care
3. Make up
4. Fragrances
5. Accessories
6. Men
7. Essential Beauty
The site has been in operation since 1999 and they have the following mission statement;

"To provide you with premium beauty products at extremely competitive prices 24 hours a day"
So after reading that mission statement I just had to have a proper look.

***NAVIGATION***
When you navigate to each product category there is a product bar down the left hand side of the screen which allows you to see easily which brands are available in a particular product range, so if you're looking for Bed head products for example in the hair care section, rather than trolling through pages and pages of products, you can easily select the Bed head brand name from the left hand column and it will take you straight to the full range of bed head products. You can also shop by brand directly from the home page if you know exactly what it is you are looking for by using a drop down menu and clicking on go, which again will take you to the brand of product you are looking to purchase.

***ESSENTIAL BEAUTY***
Beauty bay have recently made an addition to the site with their essential beauty section, where you can go to find out the latest news and keep up with the latest trends which uses various celebrities as latest look models so readers can find out the hottest tips for looking like Cheryl Cole and a variety of other celebrities. The essential beauty section provides beauty advice including an A-Z guide to beauty from information on Acne right through to Zeno, makes for interesting reading if you want to find out more about skin complaints and their causes or even breakthrough technologies and so on. There is also an Agony aunt in this new section where site users can post problems and get responses via the beauty bay website.

***HOW EASY IS THE SITE TO USE?***
The site is very easy to use. As stated before, the navigation system could not be simpler allowing you to find your favourite products within seconds. All you have to do is find what your looking for select how much of the item you want and pop it into your basket by clicking on the; add to bag option. One of the things I like about this site is that you can see whether or not a product is out of stock whereas I've found in past experiences that online retailers sometimes show products on their site that are currently unavailable so it's nice to know with Beauty bay if it says a product is in stock, then it's in stock. You can see how many items you have in your bag and the total cost at the top of the web page and it even allows you to change the currency from GBP to USD and EUR and kr. When you're ready to pay for your items all you do is click on View/checkout located underneath your shopping bag and it will take you right to it, detailing all of your current products. You have the option here to remove any products that were perhaps impulse buys or un-necessary items and to choose your delivery options and you also have the opportunity to enter any discount codes before proceeding to the checkout. Couldn't be simpler if you ask me.

***HOW COMPETITIVE IS THE PRICING?***
The only products I have ever bought from Beauty bay are hair products. I have been actively using tigi bedhead products for a number of years now but do find that it is a very expensive brand. I can get my favourite shampoo and conditioner from Beauty bay for £8.99 per 750ml pump bottle which is a bargain as most other online retailers charge over £10.00 and it's even more expensive if you buy from your hairdresser direct. The postage isn't too expensive either charging £1.95 for 2nd class and £2.50 for 1st class. They also offer 1st class recorded and next day delivery but at an expensive rate so I'd steer clear of these. The next day delivery costs almost as much as the product itself at £7.95. If you spend more than £60.00 on the website then you can get standard first class postage for free. I can't really comment on the other product areas as I have never purchased anything other than hair care products, but I would like to think that the pricing is just as competitive throughout the site.

***HOW FAST WAS THE DELIVERY***
As I had placed my order before 4pm on a weekday I was notified on the dispatch of my purchase via e-mail that very same day and I received my purchase only a couple of days later. I was very pleased with the overall service and as I am due to re-stock on my Tigi hair products I'll be sure to use Beauty bay again, as they were one of the most competitively priced online retailers I came across and I found them very easy to use. Had I needed to return my products for any reason I could have done so free of charge provided it was within 14 days of purchase, but luckily I was more than happy with what I had purchased so had no need to use this service.

***MY OVERALL IMPRESSIONS***
A nice, clean, easy to use site that provides premium beauty products at very competitive pricing with lots of additional features such as their essential beauty section. I can't complain about the delivery service as it was very good and I have had no reason to contact Beauty bay about any aspect of my shopping experience. I would recommend this site to anyone looking to save a few pennies on beauty products.

Summary: The one stop shop for Beauty products