Three myths about ownership of digital assets

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A few things about ownership of digital assets that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

“It only matters for big sites”

Domains and accounts should be registered to you. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

“Our platform handles it”

Get it in writing before work starts. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

In practice

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. 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

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