Having spent over 20 years in the tech industry, Ashish joined BurdaLuxury as Regional Director in Technology & Product in 2022, and has been behind the digital interface of BurdaLuxury since. In addition to the creation of all our brands’ websites, Ashish has developed efficient templates and models to ensure best results in user experience and SEO. As Ashish manages the department regionally, he brings together a team that values not only the depth of the work, but the importance of collaboration.
Can you tell us a bit about your experience and how you got started at BurdaLuxury?
I started my career in 2001 as a quality engineer, so it’s been around 24 years of experience. I got promoted after a year or so, was doing web development for 15 years and moved into leadership roles in the meantime. I’ve been in BurdaLuxury for over 3 years.
What’s your favourite microsite you’ve done at BurdaLuxury so far?
Something I worked on when I first joined [BurdaLuxury] is the Delicious Dining Awards for Travel + Leisure India and South Asia and the Luxury Awards for Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Macau – prior to that had very basic pages, with new versions and an option that allows users to vote. That was the first time we did that kind of activity and now, the set up is so mature that if today we have to launch an award website and the content is ready, we could launch it in a matter of two or three days! We did a couple more with masterclasses for brands like Lifestyle Asia where they definitely have different requirements. Another activity I really enjoyed was when we converted our Travel + Leisure website into a hybrid model, which was exciting not only for me, but for the team and the other stakeholders as well because we were able to achieve all the benchmarks set. Every year, we add more components – which is my favourite thing about making these sites, so there’s no specific one.
How do you target each user experience and what factors do you consider most (demographic, age, interest, etc)?
We definitely take demographics into consideration because there are some features, for example, on Lifestyle Asia or Travel + Leisure [India and South Asia] that are very popular in India. Features like web stories, for instance, where users can quickly go through a topic in 8 or 10 slides with brief content are more popular in India. So, with the editorial team, we recommend these kinds of features seeing that Google had also picked these contents as well.
Would you say there is a difference between online users in India and other regions? If so, please elaborate.
There’s not a noticeable difference in demographics, but there was one specific activity we did for the local audience in Thailand who prefer English as their language of reading. That kind of localisation is the only difference for me.
What future projects or innovative plans do you hope to establish at BurdaLuxury in the next few years?
We have a couple of things at the moment, but our main objective is to create a robust and secure environment – the site should perform well and fast.
What are some challenges you face in your role?
There are challenges to every major activity – when you’re making such drastic changes you also have to see the impact of that change on the SEO. When we renamed the Travel + Leisure global site to SEA, it wasn’t just a change of name, but a whole list in which we need to ensure perfect execution. You aren’t just changing the name, you have to take care of all the URLs which have already been indexed by Google, so it’s always better to plan things a couple of times and rehearse it on a local staging before executing finally on production to ensure zero downtime. It’s a critical activity, and definitely a challenge.
Three words to describe BurdaLuxury.
Fun. Challenging, and Flexible. We have the flexibility here to think, perform and execute things as planned. My seniors had the confidence and trust to give me a freehand to execute things.
Who were your biggest influences growing up?
My family and my mentors. You get that emotional support from family to do things better and they keep motivating you in every decision – through tough times, which is important. As for my mentors, I am in this position today because I learned a lot from them and I’m fortunate enough to have found good mentors and am still in touch with them. Starting from just a quality assurance guy and reaching this position is a lot of on-job learning and support.
Why BurdaLuxury?
I joined BurdaLuxury because as a name, they have a global presence. I thought it would be good exposure because after six months, I got a chance to visit Burda DLD [in Munich] and got the opportunity to meet with other Burda family members like the UK team, which is a different exposure. I was doing stakeholder management before, but not at this level, where I have to manage stakeholders from different cultures and different communities. It was exciting for me and I thought we’d give it a try, I think now I’m settled.
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Note: The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
