Amazon Prime Day — or “Black Friday in July” — offered several lessons for retailers to not only help them plan for this crucial shopping season, but also set themselves apart in the eyes of customers. The most critical to note: to level the playing field, and compete with e-Commerce giants like Amazon, location data and intelligence must to be at the forefront of their cross-channel strategies.

For context, it’s important to first look at how brick-and-mortar sales and foot traffic fared against Prime Day’s competitive e-Commerce deals. Gravy Analytics’ Prime Day Foot Traffic Analysis (measured consumer visits at 1,400 retail chains for the two weeks prior and following Prime Day 2018, and compared it to 2017 data), found that for some retail categories — particularly consumer electronics stores and cosmetic shops — in-store shopping is in fighting form. In-store traffic across higher-end consumer electronic stores picked up on Prime Day this year, adding 5% over the average daily attendance rates for the two weeks prior.

This kind of data, which reveals where people go and what they do there, provides valuable intelligence about consumer behaviors to help retailers plan, predict and take action ahead of the year’s pivotal holiday shopping season.