Blog · Claim compliance

The 15-minute claim check before you publish a product page

You do not need software for the first pass. Highlight ten words, ask one question per line, and sort every claim into three buckets.

Drafted by AI, checked by a human — the same rule we apply to our own copy.

Most sellers review their copy by reading it again. That catches typos and awkward sentences, and it misses the only thing that actually creates risk: a factual claim with no document behind it.

This is the check we run before we hand copy back to a client. It takes about fifteen minutes per product page, and it needs nothing but your own files.

Step 1 — Get the whole page into one document

Copy the title, the bullets, the description and every A+ block into a single plain-text file. Claims like to hide in places nobody re-reads: the fifth bullet, the comparison table, the warranty block at the bottom of the A+ section. If it is not in the document, it will not be checked.

Step 2 — Highlight ten trigger words

Search the document for these, one at a time:

• proven — and "clinically proven", "lab proven", "science-backed"
• tested — "third-party tested", "independently tested"
• certified — plus any named certification or standard
• safe — "non-toxic", "chemical-free", "safe for children and pets"
• free — "BPA-free", "gluten-free", "sugar-free"
• best — "world's best", "#1", "premium", "professional-grade"
• guarantee — "guaranteed", "never fails", "lasts a lifetime"
• FDA — and "approved", "registered", "compliant"
• natural — "100% natural", "plant-based", "clean"
• % — every percentage, and every "x times" comparison

Do not judge anything yet. Just highlight. The point of the pass is to see how many lines are actually carrying a factual promise, which is usually more than the writer remembers.

Step 3 — Ask one question per highlighted line

For each highlighted sentence, ask exactly one question:

Which document do I have that says this?

Not "is this probably true" — name the file. A test report, a certificate, a supplier specification, a study, a lab result, an invoice for a claim you are making. If you cannot name the file in five seconds, the line is not ready to publish.

This is also where most sellers discover the real problem. The claim is often true, and the document exists somewhere — with the supplier, with the factory, in a folder from two years ago. The gap is administrative, not factual, and it still fails the same test when a platform asks.

Step 4 — Sort every line into three buckets

1. Supported. You can name the document. Keep the sentence, and write the document name next to it in your notes. When a marketplace asks, you answer the same day.
2. Needs evidence. The claim may be true, but you cannot point to the paper right now. Hold it. Request the document, and keep the line out of the live page until it arrives.
3. Remove. No realistic path to substantiation. Cut the sentence and rebuild it around a fact you can prove.

Nothing stays unclassified. A claim sitting in "probably fine" is the one that gets questioned.

Step 5 — Rewrite, do not soften

The common mistake is replacing a strong claim with a vague one. "Clinically proven" becomes "high quality", which is not a claim but is also not information. The rewrite should be more specific, not less:

Same length, far more persuasive, and every part of it can be checked.

A number is fine when you say what it was measured against, on what, and when.

Step 6 — Fix the ad copy in the same pass

The sentences you just reviewed do not stay on the product page. They travel into your ad platform, which enforces its own rules on top of the marketplace's: unsupported health claims get rejected, and wording that implies something about the reader's body, skin or hair is prohibited outright. One review, two systems. Fix the source lines, and both get safer.

Step 7 — Keep the evidence in one folder per product

The last step costs nothing and saves the most time. One folder per product, named for the SKU, containing every document you cited. When a platform asks for substantiation, "I will send it" is a same-day answer instead of a two-week scramble — and the difference between a listing that comes back and one that does not.

What this check does not cover

Being honest about the limits matters more than the checklist:

• It does not review your product itself — labels, packaging and images carry claims too.
• It is not legal advice, and it does not replace a lawyer in regulated categories such as supplements, medical devices or children's products.
• It does not guarantee that a marketplace approves your page. It removes the most common, most predictable reason for a page to be questioned.
• It cannot invent evidence. If the test was never run, the honest answer is to change the sentence.

When to bring in a second pair of eyes

The checklist works when someone in the company owns the documents. It breaks down when the copy is written by a model, reviewed by the same model, and nobody has ever seen the supplier file — which is the standard AI workflow today.

That is the specific gap we work in: a human editor reads each factual line against the seller's own sources, returns the three-bucket list, and rewrites the lines that cannot be defended. The process is described on our claim substantiation page, and the deeper pattern-by-pattern breakdown is in the seven claim patterns article.