What Is ZURB and What Design Services Does It Offer?

Updated

ZURB is a product design company that has worked with ambitious teams for over 25 years, helping them turn ideas into measurable outcomes. It is best suited to organizations that need research-driven design strategy, interaction design, branding, or a full website redesign—and that want results tracked against concrete metrics rather than subjective approval. According to ZURB's own site, it has helped 2,500+ teams launch, learn, and lead.

What ZURB Does

ZURB positions design as a way to "uncover clarity, drive growth, and solve the problems that hold teams back." Its stated approach is research-driven: understand users and the business problem first, then design and prototype against that understanding. The site's framing is outcome-oriented—"Turn ideas into outcomes you can measure"—which is the clearest signal of who the company is for: teams that will judge design work by engagement, conversion, usability, or sentiment metrics.

Core Services

Based on the site's service and case descriptions, ZURB's offering falls into four areas:

Service area What it involves Evidence from the site
Design strategy Assessing a site or product, understanding user needs, identifying opportunities to improve clarity and performance Indiana University Online engagement began with an assessment of the site and user needs
Interaction design New concepts and prototypes for core flows and pages IU Online concepts and prototypes built with the Rivet design system
Branding and rebrand New brand identity and website that unify how an organization tells its story Xurrent Rebrand
Website redesign and CMS Complete redesigns, plus content management systems that simplify publishing Hulu Press redesign and new CMS
Web audit A free web audit offered as an entry point "Get a free web audit" call to action

The site also lists a community side—articles, a forum, a podcast, Q&A, and experiments—which reflects ZURB's long history of publishing design thinking content alongside client work.

What the Case Results Look Like

ZURB publishes outcome metrics with its case studies, which is useful for judging fit. The four featured projects:

  • University of Oregon — homepage redesign to better serve key audiences and improve navigation. Reported 28% higher engagement with target KPIs and a 39% increase in positive impressions over baseline.
  • Indiana University Online — site assessment, user-needs work, and new concepts/prototypes using the Rivet design system. Applications increased over 30%, page views rose 39%, and engagement rose 80%.
  • Hulu Press — complete redesign plus a new CMS to simplify publishing and press workflows. All usability scores for primary actions improved to over 90%, and overall sentiment improved 75% across homepage variations.
  • Xurrent Rebrand — new brand and website improving clarity, usability, and credibility. A 56% jump in positive homepage sentiment and 28% better readability on complex technical pages.

These are the company's own reported figures, so treat them as claims to discuss and verify in a scoping conversation rather than independent benchmarks. Still, the pattern matters: each case names a specific metric and a before/after change, which tells you what kind of accountability ZURB builds into a project.

How to Decide If ZURB Fits Your Needs

ZURB is likely a good fit if:

  • You have a defined problem—a homepage that underperforms, a site that confuses users, a brand that no longer reflects the organization—and you want it measured.
  • You need strategy and execution together, not just visual polish.
  • You are open to research and prototyping before a full build.
  • You work with an existing design system (as with IU Online's Rivet) or need one unified.

It may be less of a fit if you need only a small, one-off production task, or if you cannot commit to defining success metrics up front—since the company's whole pitch rests on measurable outcomes.

A practical next step is the free web audit offered on the site: it gives you a low-commitment way to see how ZURB evaluates a page and whether its diagnosis matches the problems you already suspect. From there, ask for case studies in your sector and for the specific metrics they would propose tracking on your project.