Before you invest in ownership of digital assets

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Before you spend anything on ownership of digital assets, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Domains and accounts should be registered to you
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Common failure modes

Losing control of a domain is a genuine emergency. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Get it in writing before work starts. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

What this looks like day to day

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about ownership of digital assets before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Losing control of a domain is a genuine emergency — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.