Portals, Reveals, and Partial Reveals

How to Get Customers to Give You Their Time.

Portals create intrigue in paintings, photographs, literature and movies. Architects use them to lengthen the time we spend in landmark stores and theme parks. Portals say, “Come on in. Stay awhile.”

Dr. Nick Grant, a close friend, was examining a group of photographs in my Accidental Magic collection when he said, “Oh! You’re a portal person. I should have known.”

“A what?”

Pointing with his finger to each of the portals in the photographs, he explained, “Portals in art help us move from one state of consciousness to another.” Dr. Grant, I should mention, is a clinical psychologist.

And thus my study of portals began.

Doorways, windows, tunnels, bridges and stairs are portals. Each of these whispers a promise of change, “Things beyond here are different than where you are.”

I’m teaching you about portals and partial reveals because customers prefer to spend their time in places where there’s more to explore, the lure of discovery, a promise of adventure.

Do you offer these things? In your store, your offices, your landscaping?

Go to the mall and you’ll see that most of the stores have no entry portal, no doorway. They stand wide open, naked, with nothing hidden or obscured. This makes it easy for you to wander into them and just as easy to wander out. Stores without doors see a lot of traffic with low curiosity and no commitment.

A door creates a threshold barrier, but once you’ve passed through it you’re insulated from the world you left outside. Customers spend more time in stores with doors.

An open portal offers a partial reveal. Notice the image at the top of this page. If the window were closed it would still be a portal though it would no longer offer a partial reveal.

A partial reveal is a glimpse, an enticement, a tease. Occasionally it’s offered through an open portal, but more often through a space between impediments. The more partial reveals you display, the longer the customer stays in your store.

Curiosity is stimulated by a partial reveal. If this were not true, there would be no long skirts with slits up the side and men would not buy their wives negligees.

A full reveal delivers the promise of the partial reveal. You catch a glimpse – the partial reveal – and are drawn toward the carefully crafted full reveal. BAM! Your world is rocked.

Water, music, and spirals are soft portals – shadow portals – but we’ll leave any further discussion of these for the upcoming class on Enticement: Visual Cues and the 12 Languages of the Mind I’ll be teaching August 18-19. We'll study in depth all the things I've written to you about in the past 4 Monday Morning Memos.

Come and you’ll see multiple examples of how a series of partial reveals – created by multiple piercings of the horizontal plane through the careful placement of display artifacts – will elevate interest in your store, office, home, garden or artwork. You’ll also see dozens of examples of how illumination affects the customer’s perception of value. Then we'll look at the foundation of all these effects – the 12 languages of the mind.

Don’t worry, once you’ve seen some examples you’ll realize this stuff isn’t nearly so complicated as it sounds.

The only way you can attend this class is to purchase a portal for the Tower. Yes, it’s time for us to pay for the doors and windows and Wizard Academy needs your help. This class should be at least $2,500 but it's not. You can fund a window for as little as $400 or put your name on a fabulous feature door for as much as $7,000. Take a look.

It’s going to be another unforgettable class. (If you can't come to the class but would still like to fund a door or window, you will forever be remembered as a leader of your people. Thanks.)

Roy H. Williams