You’ve got a product that will set your customer’s world alight.

You love it, previous customers have loved it and you want to reach more people.

So you sit down to write a sales page to let new people know all about the benefits of your offer. It’s not easy because you’re trying to fit in all of those selling points into a sales page structure that flows well, builds suspense, and reads easily.

But you persevere, you get your headline in there, your opening, the details of your offer and a call to action.

What most business owners do next is look to get feedback on their copy. Which is smart. Having a fresh air of eyes can highlight benefits you’ve missed, and let you know if anything doesn’t make sense.

Getting feedback can also be where your pretty good sales page takes a dive for the worse.

Warning: not all feedback is useful

When asking anyone to review your sales page, you need to be careful.

Because if you simply send it out to trusted friends, family and even colleagues you can find yourself more confused and frustrated than before. It’s not that your peers are out to get you, it’s just that, without guidance, they will look at your copy and review it based on what they like. Not necessarily based on your business model, audience and sales page goals.

So here are 5 things you must do when asking anyone to review your sales page:

1. Choose the right people (this will surprise you)

Usually, business owners hand over their writing to friends who are writers, enjoy writing, or are good at writing.

For sales copywriting, this is a bad idea.

Good writers tend to get excited about punctuation, grammar, semi-colons, and whether or not you should write “while” or “whilst.”

That’s great if you want to turn in your sales page to your teacher at the end of the day, but you don’t. You want to make sales. I’m not saying grammar and punctuation aren’t important, I’m saying that being too stringent on these rules can cripple or kill the persuasive effect of your copywriting.

So who should you ask to review your sales page?

In short, someone who fits your target market. Someone who could turn into a customer.

A copywriter once stated that if he saw a client pick up a pen when they reviewed the copy his heart sank. It meant they were reading the copy as an editor rather than a customer.

So pick people who might be interested in your product. If they read your draft copy and say they want to find out more, that tells you a lot more than being told a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with. 😉

2. Make sure those people are invested in your outcome

Okay, so you’ve highlighted the right people to approach with your sales copy, now we come to the second filter.

Make sure that those people have some investment in your outcome. I don’t mean they need to profit from your sales, I just mean they are sincerely interested in you doing well.

I’ve seen people ask for sales page feedback in online forums. It seems like a great idea, you post up your sales page, and wait for the suggestions to flood in before making your revisions.

But here’s the thing, it’s easy for someone to jump into a thread and say something they think will make them look important to other members. What you want is someone who will tailor their feedback to your business, your customers and your goals.

People who are invested in you doing well include:

• Members of a mastermind group
• Friends and family (who support your business and understand or fit your customer profile)
• A copywriting coach
• A small focus group (perhaps a sample of readers from your newsletter)

And once you’ve found the right people, you need to:

3. Ask the right questions

This makes it easier for your reader to provide you with relevant feedback.

Don’t just ask your “what do you think?”

You risk ending up with either a “yeah it looks fine” or a long-winded but mostly irrelevant suggestion.

To avoid that, here are some common questions you can ask:

• Does the headline get your attention? 
• Does the headline make you want to read more? 
• Does the headline sound dramatic without sounding unbelievable? 
• Is it easy to read and scan through?
• Can you tell me what you think are the most attractive parts of the offer?
• Did you have any unanswered questions that would stop you buying this? 
• Do you trust the company will deliver on the promise? 

Notice that apart from “is this easy to read and scan through” these are not questions about the right words, they are questions focus on making sales.

Which brings me to the next tip:

4. Enjoy the praise but remember your goal

Writing a sales page can be tough. Your writing comes under scrutiny by a whole set of different rules than you learned in school.

It is easy to get hooked on feedback that makes you feel good, or clever and it’s nice to be praised for a piece of work you’ve spent hours creating.

But the feedback has to drive you closer to your goal.

So when looking at the advice you receive, ask yourself if there is practical use, or if it’s just there to make you feel good.

If a reviewer tells you they love how you’ve described the product in your sales page, wait before you pat yourself on the back. Ask them which features stood out the most, ask them if they would buy it, and if not, why not.

5. Know when to stop (and start the REAL feedback)

You have to be okay with publishing a sales page that is not perfect in your eyes. If you wait for perfection, you may never publish it (and just think how many sales you might be missing).

What’s more, it’s only after you publish that you get the feedback that means anything at all, namely: are you making sales?

Use the tips on this page to gather relevant feedback on your sales page, but know when to put it out for the real test, which is to your audience.

The beauty of a sales page is that as you drive traffic to the page, make sales and look at your conversions you can start using that feedback to continue to tweak your copy until it’s performing just how you want it.

Good luck!

If you would like help reviewing your sales page, you might be interested in the copywriting coaching options on this site. One choice is a full sales page review with 3 feedback calls and a written critique. Click here to find out more.