As more companies migrate their client support services to the Internet, IT departments everywhere are constantly being pressured to deliver better and faster performance and results in less time. For many, that means investigating alternatives such as cloud services and colocation providers.

The challenge they then face is deciding which option meets their needs. While cloud services providers and colocation providers offer comparable benefits, each one is designed to meet a particular set of business and technology requirements.

When the features, benefits and sheer potential of cloud computing became obvious, many businesses were quick to embrace it and transfer their mission-critical data and services into a virtual location perceived to be infallible.

There were, and continue to be, certain security and reliability considerations, but the overall consensus is that these challenges have been overcome or, at the very least, are unlikely to arise. 

How can your data center attract mid-size cloud prospects? First off, we need to be a lot more specific about what mid-size means. 

Typically, there is a geographic area that matches up with a company’s size.

• Is it the United States?
• Is it a region?
• Is it a metro area?
• Is it international?

When I talk with owners of IT businesses that are struggling to generate more leads, clients, and revenue from their cloud services websites, I see a shockingly common problem: Nearly all of these websites have only one or two ways for a visitor to become a lead.

The Contact Us Page Problem

In most cases, you’ll find a Contact Us page. Now granted some Contact Us pages are better done than others.

The lousy Contact Us pages try to hide the company’s physical location and sometimes even its phone number.

The good Contact Us pages not only alleviate website visitor anxiety by providing offline contact information, the forms that capture the data do a good job of walking the tightrope between:

• Asking enough information to properly qualify the lead
• Not freaking out website visitors by asking for the earth, moon, sun, and stars

But the bigger issue: Generally the only people who will fill out a Contact Us form are either