Ownership of digital assets: the questions we get asked most

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. The questions about ownership of digital assets that come up most often on our calls.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Do we need to care about this?

Domains and accounts should be registered to you. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

How do we know it is working?

Get it in writing before work starts. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. 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
• Domains and accounts should be registered to you — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.