Five mistakes teams make with ownership of digital assets

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. These are the ones we run into repeatedly when we audit ownership of digital assets.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What to watch for

• Treating it as a launch task rather than an ongoing one
• Assuming someone else already owns it
• Domains and accounts should be registered to you
• Losing control of a domain is a genuine emergency
• Never checking whether the fix actually worked

Get it in writing before work starts. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Where to go from here

What this looks like day to day

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

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.