Best Online Skincare Shops in BiH: How to Recognise Them

In 2020, researchers tested 28 products sold as 100% argan oil. Four were not pure argan oil, which in that sample is one bottle in seven. Everything pointed to other, cheaper plant oils mixed in.

All 28 labels said the same thing. It took a laboratory to tell them apart.

When you buy skincare on your phone, you have no laboratory. You have a photograph, a description and the shop's website. That is still enough to learn a good deal about the product and the shop: five things can be checked before you confirm the order, and a sixth in a shop, if you can get to one.

Read the ingredients first

The photograph shows the front of the pack. What you are buying is written on the back: the ingredient list, also called the INCI list. A serious shop publishes the whole list on the product page, so you can read it before you order. A handful of "key ingredients" picked out in the description is a selection from that list. You want all of it.

The list reads from the top. Ingredients run from the largest amount downwards, as far as the one per cent mark. Below that mark the order is free and says nothing more about quantity.

So the first lines tell you what kind of product it is. A cream, a milk or a gel usually starts with water, written Aqua. A balm usually starts with oils and wax, and a sugar scrub with Sucrose.

Plants appear under their Latin names. Argania Spinosa Kernel Oil is oil from the argan kernel; Opuntia Ficus-Indica Seed Oil is prickly pear seed oil. Scent is written as Parfum or Fragrance, so if scents bother you, that is the word to look for. If you have a known allergy, show the list to your doctor or pharmacist.

If the list is not on the page, ask for it by message before ordering. A photograph of the back of the pack is a perfectly good answer.

Argan oil has one line

An oil sold as 100% argan has a single ingredient on its list: Argania Spinosa Kernel Oil. If other oils stand beside it, the bottle holds a blend, however large the word "argan" is printed on the front. The same rule holds for any oil sold as pure: black seed oil lists Nigella Sativa Seed Oil and nothing else.

The list is the first step. Colour and scent are the second. What unrefined argan oil looks and smells like, and how the oil for skin differs from the oil for cooking, is set out in argan oil: the complete guide.

Compare the price per millilitre

Packs come in different sizes, so the price alone tells you little. Divide it by the number of millilitres or grams and bring everything to the same measure, say 10 ml. What is sold by the gram, count by the gram; what is sold by the millilitre, by the millilitre.

Take two tubes. One holds 100 ml and costs 30 KM; the other holds 40 ml and costs 16 KM. Ten millilitres of the first cost 3 KM, of the second 4 KM. The smaller tube is cheaper at the checkout and dearer in the bathroom.

Then look at how much goes into one application: a drop, a pea, a palmful. That decides how long a pack lasts, and there is more on it in how much face cream to use.

Check the total, delivery included

Before you confirm the order, look at the total in the cart, delivery included. A seller has to tell you the price and every added cost, delivery among them, before you order.

If you order by message, ask for the total with delivery and the delivery date in writing, and only then confirm. If you pay cash on delivery, that is the amount you hand the courier at the door.

If the shop has an amount above which delivery is free, check that figure in the cart as well. Order two things you need anyway at the same time, and you pay for delivery once.

Read the returns page before you order

The returns page is easiest to read while nothing is urgent. Look for the answers to four questions:

• How many days you have to return something, and from which day they count.
• Whether the shop takes back an opened pack.
• Who pays for the return delivery.
• How your money comes back, especially if you pay cash on delivery.

If there is no such page, ask by message and keep the reply.

With skincare, the second question matters most. You get to know a cream or an oil only after a few days of using it, and by then the pack is open.

While you are there, look at who is selling: the full company name, address, telephone and e-mail. A seller should give you all of that in advance, and it tells you whom to contact if something goes wrong.

When the parcel arrives, compare the ingredient list on the pack with the one on the page. They must match. Keep the order confirmation, e-mail or message, and hold on to the box until you decide whether the product stays. A return will need the order number.

Smell it before you buy

Two things do not fit in a photograph: scent and the feel on the skin.

You wear a cream or an oil all day, so you have to like how it smells. Texture you only learn on the back of your hand: how thick it is, how quickly it sinks in, how the skin feels under your fingers a minute later.

So if you can get to a shop, go before your first order. Smell it and try it on the back of your hand. After that you know exactly what you are ordering, and the next pack can be ordered from home.

How it works with us

Every product we sell has a tester in our shop at Sarajevo City Center, Vrbanja 1, on the third floor. We are open Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 22:00, and closed on Sunday. What to smell first is in where to buy Moroccan cosmetics in Sarajevo.

The full ingredient list of every product we sell is on its product page and on ingredients and INCI, so you can run each of these checks on us first.

We hand parcels to BH Pošta in Sarajevo, and they arrive in one to two working days anywhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Delivery costs 8 KM, and on orders from 59 KM we pay it.

We accept returns on an opened pack you have started using as well. It is enough that the product does not suit you: we send a courier to your address to collect it, and we pay for the return delivery.

The laboratory checked its 28 bottles by nuclear magnetic resonance. Your next order needs an ingredient list, the calculator on your phone and the back of one hand.