Mark Zuckerberg’s Idea for Your Pricing Page.

Asked what Facebook was in an early interview, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said, “Something where you can type someone’s name and find out a bunch of information about them.”

I found this on a Medium post shortly after a SaaS client asked me to write one-line feature descriptions for their pricing page.

My copywriter instincts told me to incorporate benefits. But after writing a few, I realized they felt forced. Like telling someone who never sat in a driver’s seat that the brake pedal prevents accidents.

Zuckerberg’s formula is very simple: input, output. You do this and that happens. Gas pedal: You step on it and the car goes. Brake pedal: You step on it and the car stops.

If the formula gets tiresome, you can mix up the sentence structure. Rearview mirror: See behind the car with a glance.

There’s no way to know if this works better than the gobbledygook you see on most pricing pages. But if you need to explain features, you can do worse than to follow the example that helped make Facebook a unicorn before the term even existed.