Splunk Website Review - Sign up process

Hi all, 

We are reviewing the Sign up part of Splunk's Website. Splunk has been making a lot of news in the data visualization market, because of its unique capability to index and search a variety of data, from structured to unstructured and specializing in Machine Data. E.g. Apache Logs, Windows Logs, Port Data, and other unstructured text. 

I signed up for Splunk's trial some days back and the Sign-up process was not up to the mark. I would rather say it doesn't represent such a Techy Organisation. I will quickly point out the mistakes which Splunk's interaction designers shouldn't have done. 

SIGN-UP Part:

1. Navigate to https://www.splunk.com/page/sign_up for Sign up, and start filling the form by giving your details. Try using your keyboard alone, to move to next fields (that's what a normal user does while filling a form). Guess what!! After First Name, it goes to Email. Shouldn't it be Last Name. In nutshell, the taborder for these fields is wrong here. Really wonder how they missed it. 

2. Come below and you specify your password. Using Javascript they display the Password Strength, Good. But guess what, your Repeat Password confirmation happens only after you press Submit button. Isn't that useful if done by Js there itself, as and when person leaves that Textbox ?

3. Ok Fine I move forward and Submit it. I get this message. 

For God sake, you cannot make it mandatory to receive your email advertisements. If i do not subscribe to it, i cannot proceed with Sign-up. That's disappointing. The team at Splunk should rather look at better ways of educating users. Also, keeping anything on Sign-up page, which can irritate user should be avoided.

The height is - Even for asking something from their experts (http://www.splunk.com/index.php/ask_expert/default/3174), you need to say YES to their newsletters. :(

4. If you have somehow chosen a username, which has already been taken, you would be able to know that only after pressing Submit and looking at their screen for a while. I am really not sure, why Splunk designers did not use JQuery or AJAX here. 

5. Anyhow, once you are able to do all the formalities, and you submit, you are redirected to http://www.splunk.com/page/predownload?d=emailed , and there is no message shown of being successful account creation or anything. I just looked hard and found that I am already logged in to my account (when i pressed back in browser).

What!! Are you really joking? No Email verification !! Have they decided to fill their DB with some crap values. I was able to do a useless registration with a non-existing Email ID, and my account was active without any email verification. The data collected from here actually gives many leads to the company of prospect customers. 

I remember there used to be an email verification earlier. But not sure why they have removed it now. In that email verification module, even after you have verified once, and in case you click the link again and go that page, it will still show you the same message. Ideally, it should be like "Your email is already validated", and then a redirect to my Landing Page.

6. Do a "View Source" of Sign-up page (view-source:https://www.splunk.com/page/sign_up), and you would get to see the kind of markup which is written there. Something is surely wrong with the designers of this site. Else, i would not be seeing this type of code in Production. Visible comments, scattering of code - it is all too much. 

CONCLUSION

Here is the sad part. Splunk is a big organization in terms of work they are doing. But, when it comes to designing their website, they are missing it somewhere. The team should understand that "Smooth Trial" of the product can take you a long way, and the first impression on the customer comes from your Sign Up process. I am sure, these things would be rectified very soon.