Lower prices are one of the major factors that encourage consumers to shop online, according to a new infographic by price comparison site Pricena.

According to PayPal’s recent e-commerce report, 18% of shoppers prefer shopping online thanks to lower prices. According to Pricena, 84% of those online shoppers chose the first three cheapest stores, with the majority (51%) going directly to the cheapest one. When reading through price comparisons, only 2% percent of consumers even look beyond those three cheap stores.

This could mean that online stores with higher prices will lose out, even though PayPal’s report has shown that customers are not only looking for lower prices when shopping online, but for convenience (26%) and product variety (15%).

What do customers want?

Basing on the most-searched keywords on Pricena, the infographic reveals that electronics is the most popular category for online shoppers in the UAE. Online stores such as Souq.com and JadoPado are going head to head against big offline electronic retailers, but according to this data, they're often able to offer goods for much less; for example, the price differential between the cheapest online store and offline for cameras is AED 612. In time, this gap might shrink, as competition forces the retail price down, or as more offline stores go online.

To find out more about how online shoppers are comparing prices, click on the infographic below for a bigger picture.