If you are using a Shopping cart like OSCommerce then most of your sales copy stuff will be managed by the backend of the shopping cart. Or at least that's how I do it. While it helps, it's definitely not needed to get your site into HTML. Get to the point where your site is functional and can be navigated (HTML/CSS) and just make sure there are at least place holders for everything that are in text format.
Like IceCube said, there may be some people that use some type of automated crap to do the coding for you. Before you accept the work you should definitely run it through the w3c validator. If it doesn't pass, I definitely wouldn't accept it. Also make sure that text on the page is actually text and not images. A lot of automated junk will do this.
Play around with the site and add more content to certain sections or remove content and see what happens to the site. Does everything like backgrounds and stuff move properly?
Those are just a few ways to make sure that all the code is good.
Like IceCube said, there may be some people that use some type of automated crap to do the coding for you. Before you accept the work you should definitely run it through the w3c validator. If it doesn't pass, I definitely wouldn't accept it. Also make sure that text on the page is actually text and not images. A lot of automated junk will do this.
Play around with the site and add more content to certain sections or remove content and see what happens to the site. Does everything like backgrounds and stuff move properly?
Those are just a few ways to make sure that all the code is good.