Alexander Benz
Alexander Benz, CEO of Blikket

Award-winning digital designer Alexander Benz is taking his boutique studio Blikket onto the global stage from a new base in Los Angeles, with a brief to modernise how established sectors sell and serve online. With more than 14 years in UX and conversion optimisation, Benz has been featured by Fast Company and the BBC, and is the author of the Amazon best-seller Winning the Game with UX Design & CRO.

'The best digital experiences feel effortless,' he says. 'Customers expect interactions to anticipate their needs, to feel tailored, and to simply work. Technology should be an invisible enabler.'

Early Track Record

Benz taught himself to code at 11 and built some of Norway's first viral fan sites for The Sims and for Rihanna. The projects drew the attention of Electronic Arts and Universal Music Group, and sharpened his understanding of how design shapes community behaviour. He later founded his own start-ups and worked with larger enterprises on strategic design and conversion rate optimisation. That mix of craft and commercial focus now anchors Blikket's emphasis on data-led UX, clear strategy and the removal of friction, and reflects a recurring theme in his career: being early to new approaches and updating traditional sectors with modern product thinking.

Improving Conversion at a Market Leader

Benz's instinct to pioneer has increasingly been applied to established sectors that need sharper digital execution. As a consultant to a leading online bookseller in Norway, he was brought in to address weak conversion and high basket abandonment. He led a full audit and A/B testing programme, redesigned product pages and simplified checkout, delivering a clear uplift in performance and customer satisfaction. Following that engagement, he was headhunted by Gyldendal, parent company of Ark.no, to help develop a creator-led commerce platform, a concept recognised in Fast Company's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. Many of the gains from the bookseller project informed the Blikket Wireframe.

Gen Z and the Return to the High Street

The book trade illustrates a wider shift that Blikket targets: linking digital discovery to in store demand. Recent UK research highlights a clear role for Gen Z in sustaining physical bookshops:

  • Visits driven by social discovery. Nearly half of 16 to 25-year-olds report visiting a bookshop specifically to buy a title first encountered on social platforms.
  • Trust in people over algorithms. Sixty-five per cent of Gen Z regard booksellers as knowledgeable sources, and 49 per cent say they are likely to purchase on a bookseller's recommendation. This outpaces Gen X at 37 per cent and Baby Boomers at 31 per cent.
  • Shops as community space. UK listings for book clubs rose by about 350 per cent between 2019 and 2023. Fifty-eight per cent of Britons say discovery is better in store than online, and 61 per cent find the atmosphere inspiring. Events, signed editions and space to dwell are notable draws for younger customers.

Benz's work sits at this junction, translating momentum from social channels into cleaner, faster purchase paths and helping traditional retailers perform across both screens and the high street.

Blikket's Framework and Outcomes

From its Los Angeles base, Blikket partners with global brands that see digital as central to identity, engagement and revenue. At its core is the Blikket Wireframe, a proprietary ecommerce framework that combines conversion psychology, UX strategy and empirical testing in a structured, adaptable blueprint. Developed through original research and refined in practice across sectors, the methodology reflects the principles set out in Benz's best-selling book and is protected by multiple design registrations in Norway.

In recent deployments, the framework has helped lift product page conversion into double digits, embed subscription models that create recurring revenue within weeks, and turn lifecycle email into seven-figure revenue channels for individual clients. Across its portfolio, the studio reports generating more than £110 million ($150 million) for its clients.

Looking Ahead

Benz expects digital products to become more intuitive, more personalised and more closely integrated into daily life as AI and data mature. 'The goal is not to foreground technology, but to remove friction so the brand's value is clear,' he says. His advice to leaders is simple: prioritise the user experience, how easily someone moves through it and how understood they feel.

From early community building in Norway to leading a design studio in the United States, Benz has built a career on applying rigorous design to legacy categories. The bet is that precise, user-centred experiences will decide who succeeds online and on the high street.