When it comes to choosing amenities for their dream home, homeowners are far more likely to perceive the value of a granite countertop or a whirlpool tub than the advantages of structured wiring. The wiring industry hasn’t done much to encourage homeowners to think differently over the years, using marketing budgets to feed electricians, custom installers, and builders nuts and bolts product information at the expense of consumer education.
With structured wiring penetration at 50 percent or more of new housing starts—without much attention to the homeowner—OnQ Technologies began wondering last summer how many consumers have fallen through the cracks. If half of all new homeowners opt for structured wiring without much encouragement, how many more customers could the company win with a little end-user education?
The company is about to find out, as it launched www.onqhome.com in April. Targeted at homeowners, the site disguises the company’s 650 products as solutions grouped into recognizable, consumer-friendly categories comprising entertainment, communication, and comfort. There consumers can learn how OnQ packages open the door for various lifestyle solutions.
When consumers click on Entertainment, for instance, they have a choice of music, theater, or gaming. Drilling deeper, they can get a breakdown of various OnQ packages divided into good, better, and best. The Ultimate package for multi-room music serves two rooms with keypad controls and in-wall speakers. The section details the OnQ wiring package required to get those features. The site also features case studies of how actual homeowners use the systems.
The OnQ Home URL is more than just a domain name. The company is going through an image overhaul, reinventing itself as OnQ Home to reflect a new commitment to the big picture, rather than the pieces and parts required to get there. “We’re looking at our entire business from the other way back up,” says Stephen Schoffstall, vice president of business development for OnQ. “We’re not just putting technology out on the market and hoping it sticks. We’re talking to homeowners, surveying them, figuring out what they’re buying, what has resonated with them, what worked when they talked to builders and what they didn’t like. We’re looking at our business from the homeowners back up.”
The rebranding is part of a commitment to demystify technology to homeowners, says Schoffstall. “We’re focused on making it simpler for our dealers and builders to sell to homeowners who care more about benefits and solutions than about technology. We purposely picked the OnQ Home name not only to leverage the history of who we are but to soften up and reset ourselves to target the home.”
From surveys, OnQ found that homeowners were barraged with information about technology from builders, sales staff, and dealers without gaining an understanding of how technology would benefit them. “They often didn’t hear the entire message about what structured wiring could do for them,” Schoffstall says. By the time they understood or learned more, it was too late to make changes without incurring prohibitive costs. “Later on they found out about lots of things they wanted and were discouraged that they hadn’t been presented with opportunities up front. Everything starts with a solid infrastructure of wires but once the walls go up your options become limited.”
Lighting is one area particularly under-served, Schoffstall says. Homeowners typically heard about computer networking and sharing broadband access but they didn’t understand they could build the foundation for lighting control if they added a wiring package for that as well. “Lighting control is very popular and there are additional wires you have to add to your basic structure so you can take advantage of it when you’re ready to do it,” he says. “If you don’t put those in you have to rely on other technologies that may not work as well without a structured wiring infrastructure.”
When it comes to networking, OnQ has discovered that a hybrid wireless and wired approach works best. Schoffstall notes that homeowners can’t always anticipate where they’ll want to have PC or Internet access for a laptop PC, and now that the latest versions of Windows PCs incorporate wireless networking, homeowners want to have that option as well.
OnQ sells a WAP (wireless access protocol) device that enables homeowners to tap into a home network wirelessly within a 400-foot radius. The devices, which were designed to look like a typical smoke detector, are installed in a central location in the home, unlike wireless access points purchased at retail that connect at the office PC. Depending where they’re located in a house, WAP devices don’t always provide reliable wireless coverage. “People don’t want to have to scoot up 6 inches in a chair to get the signal,” Schoffstall says. “By choosing a central location in the home, you can put one of our WAP devices that will give you wireless network coverage throughout the house,” Schoffstall says, “not the kind of spotty coverage you get with some WAP locations.”
These kinds of applications are explained on the Web site, which Schoffstall defines as a portal because users log in and are then delivered information tailored to their needs. Homeowners will be able to register for long-term support, for example. Consumers who move into a home with an OnQ system will be able to find out how it works.
The Builder section is customized for home builders. “Builders all want to know the same things,” says Schoffstall. “They want to know where can I make money, what’s the return on investment, give me a financial calculator to determine how big an opportunity is for my development. How do I sell it, brand it, and use it to close business?”
All of the consumer literature found on the OnQ Home Web site can be customized for individual builders. Builders can go into the portal, choose solutions they want to offer their customers, and integrate the information into their own Web sites or literature under their own brands. They can provide pricing for system packages if they choose to, and they can refer homeowners to an OnQ toll-free number for additional technical information.
“The portal allows them to upload their logo and company information into the system,” Schoffstall says, “and then the system can integrate all the front-end Web pages into theirs.” In addition, OnQ’s expert content management system allows builders to pool literature into a single piece that they can deliver to a printer or send electronically to customers as e-mail.
By answering homeowner questions early on, OnQ hopes to alleviate concerns about living with technology. “Entertainment is one of our most opportunistic areas,” says Schoffstall. “Everybody wants a home theater, whether it’s a 27-inch TV or a giant plasma, yet everyone struggles with the same thing. Many wives don’t want to see the wires.” OnQ wants customers to know that they don’t have to see the wires to have the latest in home theater. If they prepare ahead of time for the cable and Ethernet connection required for latest generation ReplayTV and TiVo boxes, for example, they can be on the cutting edge of technology without the unsightly effects.
“If customers move into their home and haven’t heard that we have this infrastructure that allows them to plug in in-wall speakers and volume controls, they’re typically disappointed,” he says. “For areas like entertainment and lighting, if you don’t wire for it right then, it causes issues later.”—Rebecca Day specializes in writing about home electronics. She can be reached at customhomerd@aol.com.
