economic cycle research institute
B2B • FORECASTING
How do you design a digital experience worthy of the world's most accurate economic forecaster — and make it feel indispensable before the market even moves?
When investment managers, C-suite executives, and government policymakers need to know what's coming next in the global economy, they turn to ECRI. The Economic Cycle Research Institute has spent more than a century — across three generations of researchers — perfecting the art and science of predicting turns in growth and inflation before anyone else sees them. Their record speaks for itself: over fifteen years of accurate recession calls with no false alarms, described by clients and analysts alike as the most accurate forecasting institution in the world. ECRI's insight is genuinely rare. The challenge was ensuring their digital presence — the platform through which that insight reaches Fortune 500 companies, major asset managers, and government agencies on six continents — was as sharp, credible, and ahead-of-the-curve as the calls it delivers.
CHALLENGE
ECRI serves two very different audiences with a single digital platform. Members — senior investment professionals, C-suite executives, and policymakers who rely on ECRI's analysis as a critical input to high-stakes decisions — needed a deeply functional, high-touch experience: fast, intuitive access to proprietary indexes, dashboards, and ahead-of-the-curve calls across more than twenty-two economies. At the same time, the platform needed to educate prospects and media, establishing ECRI's authority and converting qualified leads without compromising the premium, members-only nature of the core product. Underlying both was an operational challenge: ECRI's research team publishes continuously, responding to economic conditions in real time. A platform built for a one-hundred-year institution could not slow down the people keeping pace with the economy.
APPROACH
We approached ECRI's digital strategy as a complete redesign of how the institution presents itself and serves its members — building a platform that functions simultaneously as a powerful marketing engine for prospects and media, and as an indispensable analytical tool for the clients who depend on it daily.
Member Dashboard and Analytics Experience At the heart of the platform is a members-only dashboard designed around the actual decision-making workflows of investment managers and C-suite executives. We mapped how senior professionals consume and act on economic intelligence — what they need first, how they navigate between data sets, and what makes an analytical tool feel essential rather than effortful. The resulting experience gives members immediate access to ECRI's proprietary indexes, cyclical outlooks across twenty-two economies, and the ahead-of-the-curve calls that define the institution's value — organized so that every element serves the decision at hand.
A Marketing and Authority Platform for Prospects and Media For prospects, journalists, and the broader financial community, we designed a public-facing experience that establishes ECRI's credibility and communicates the value of membership compellingly — without giving the store away. Carefully structured access to public commentary, media appearances, and select index data creates a clear picture of ECRI's accuracy and reach, while the premium nature of the members-only experience is always visible just beyond the threshold. The architecture is designed to convert qualified leads: the right people see enough to know they need more.
A Publishing Infrastructure Built for Real-Time Analysis ECRI's research team operates at the pace of the economy — which means the platform needed to keep up. We redesigned the content management system from the ground up to streamline publishing workflows, reduce friction between analysis and publication, and give the research team the speed their work demands. The result is a platform that serves members faster and enables the institution to maintain its position as the voice heard first when cycle turns are approaching.
RESULTS
Publishing time reduced by more than fifty percent — giving ECRI's research team the speed needed to deliver ahead-of-the-curve calls the moment they matter
The member dashboard has been described by C-suite executives and investment managers as highly usable and critical to their decision-making — the highest endorsement a tool of this kind can receive _ A unified platform serving both growth and retention: a powerful marketing engine that educates prospects and media while delivering a deeply functional, high-touch experience to members
ECRI's digital presence now reflects the authority of an institution trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major asset managers, and government agencies on all six continents
Over one hundred proprietary indexes across twenty-two economies, delivered through an experience that makes the world's most complex economic data feel clear, navigable, and actionable The best analytical insight in the world is only as valuable as the experience through which it's delivered. For ECRI, that experience now matches the precision, authority, and speed of the calls that have made the institution indispensable to the people who manage the world's most consequential economic decisions.
