Electronic shelf label implementation guide

Rolling out electronic shelf labels is a data and organisation project before it is an installation job. The phases are: store survey and gateway coverage, cleaning and pairing product codes, a pilot, section-by-section rollout, training, removing the paper, and ongoing maintenance. The costliest failures almost always come from product codes, not from the labels.

This guide walks through the whole path from the buyer’s side, not the seller’s. It gives no vendor timelines or terms, because those change with every project; it does give the questions worth asking at each phase. If you are not yet sure what the system is, start with what an electronic shelf label is.

Before you start: what sets the scope

Three things fix the real size of the project, and it pays to put them on the table before asking for quotes.

The first is the catalogue. A store with 3,000 well-coded items is a different job from one with 25,000, many of them on internal codes, multipacks or sold by weight. The second is the system that owns the price: ERP, point of sale, or a file someone edits by hand. The third is the pace of price change: if you change ten prices a month, electronic labels save little time; if you run weekly promotions or push tens of thousands of changes, the sums look different. To put your own figures on it, use the total cost calculator.

Decide early, too, who owns the project inside the company. A project split between purchasing, IT and stores with no single owner tends to stall exactly at the data phase.

Phase 1. Store survey and gateway coverage

In most systems the labels do not join the store wifi. They talk by radio (at least one vendor uses infrared; the bands each one uses are on the technology page) to gateways (also called access points or base stations) that are on the network. Radio is the weak point of the whole system: range, speed, battery life and reliability have to be balanced, as the general overview of the field puts it. That is why the coverage survey is not a formality.

What a serious site visit should cover:

• Floor plan and materials. Metal shelving, cold rooms, load-bearing walls and dense displays weaken the signal. A plan showing aisles and obstacles is the starting point.
• Power and network. Each gateway needs power and a connection to the store network. Ask whether it runs on power over Ethernet (PoE) or needs a socket, because that decides whether anyone has to work in the ceiling or on the cabling.
• Number and position of gateways. This should come from a measurement or a simulation, not from a fixed rule per square metre. Ask to see the method.
• Difficult areas. Chilled and frozen sections, outdoor areas and counters in direct sunlight deserve a separate check: not every label model tolerates the same temperatures or reads equally well.
• Interference. Other equipment on the same radio band (wifi access points, alarm systems, radio scales) can affect communication.

A simple test before signing: put several sample labels in the worst spots in the store (the far end of an aisle, the top shelf of the chiller) and check that they take an update. It costs little and saves surprises.

Phase 2. EAN/SKU pairing and data cleaning

This is the phase that delays most projects. Each label has its own identifier, printed or readable by barcode or NFC, and it has to be paired with a product. The pairing is made against a code: usually the EAN (in the US and Canada, the UPC), sometimes an internal SKU or an ERP item number. Once paired, the price shown is whatever the platform holds for that code.

The same problems turn up again and again:

Problem	What it causes	How to handle it
One EAN with two prices (by pack size or by store, say)	The label shows one of them, with no warning	Agree a precedence rule before loading
Products without an EAN: produce, deli, bakery	Nothing to scan	Use an internal code or PLU and check the system supports it
Duplicate or wrong EANs in the item master	Labels paired to the wrong product	Audit the master before installation, not during it
Multipacks, multibuy offers and unit prices	The template cannot hold the data	Define what is displayed and where each field comes from
Long descriptions or special characters	Truncated or unreadable text on small screens	Set a maximum length and abbreviations per template
Discontinued items still in the file	Labels for products that no longer exist	Clean up, or flag as inactive, before importing

Two practical tips. First, run a test import of the full catalogue and see how many items fail: that number is a good thermometer for data quality. Second, decide who fixes errors and in which system. If they are corrected only in the label platform, the ERP keeps the error and it will contaminate the next load.

The detailed mechanics of ERP or point-of-sale integration are outside this guide; in short, there are file loads, connections through a programming interface, and ready-made connectors for certain software. How a price travels from the database to the screen, piece by piece, is explained on the technology page; how it fits your particular software is something only the vendor can answer, and you should get that answer in writing.

Phase 3. The pilot

A pilot exists to find what the survey missed. It is not a sales demo, nor a scaled-down installation called a pilot so it costs less. Define in advance what will be measured and what result would make the project continue, be corrected or be stopped.

Conditions for a pilot worth running:

1. One store and one or two representative sections, including at least one difficult zone (chilled, fast-moving lines, promotional signage).
2. Written success criteria. For example: share of labels showing the correct price against the till, time for a change to appear on the shelf, incidents per week, staff time spent.
3. Long enough to go through at least one full promotional cycle and one bulk price change.
4. Measurement against the till. The most useful check is to compare the price the customer sees with the one the POS charges, section by section.
5. A named person in store who records what fails and what annoys.

What a pilot service should include and what to ask the vendor is set out in the pilot service. Here it is enough to remember that the pilot is also your best moment to negotiate: with real data you have grounds to adjust the scope, and you have not yet signed the rollout.

Phase 4. Store rollout sequence

Once the pilot is validated, rollout stops being a technical question and becomes logistics. Some rules that work:

• One store at a time at first, speeding up only when the process repeats without incident. Installing three stores in parallel with the same data error multiplies the problem by three.
• Stores with the cleanest data and fewest quirks first, so the team builds rhythm; the harder ones (different format, extensive chilled areas, old premises) later, with the experience gained.
• Inside each store, by closed sections. Finish one aisle before starting the next, so customers do not see a shelf that is half paper and half screen for no reason.
• Templates fixed beforehand. Changing the label design mid-rollout means redoing what is done.
• Platform prepared in advance. By the time the team reaches the store, the planned pairings, users and templates should already be loaded.
• Check afterwards. At the end of each section, compare prices with the till and log what failed.

One legal point not to forget in sales and promotions: changing how prices are displayed does not change your obligations about the previous price. Under EU consumer law, since Directive (EU) 2019/2161, a price reduction announcement must indicate the lowest price applied in the 30 days before the reduction. The electronic label can show it, but it has to be fed the right data; the detail is in the guide to the 30-day reference price. Check how your own country transposed the rule, as national details differ.

Phase 5. Staff training

Training is not showing someone a screen. Different roles do different things with the system, so split the training into three levels.

Shelf stackers and sales assistants. They need to recognise a mispaired label or one that has lost communication (from the indicator or the platform alert), how to find a label from a product, and what to do when one appears blank, faded or damaged. Also how to pair a new label when a new product goes on the shelf.

Store manager. Must review label status (battery, communication), know the urgent-change process and whom to alert, with what data.

Central pricing and data team. The most affected group, because price is no longer changed “on the shelf” but in a system. Governance is decided here: who can change what, how a promotion is authorised, how it is audited.

A couple of frequent training mistakes: giving it only before installation (it is forgotten) or only after (it arrives late), and not leaving a one-page guide with the five most common situations. A short second session a few weeks in, when real cases have come up, is worth repeating.

Phase 6. Moving off paper

Paper does not disappear overnight, and it should not while doubts remain. Two principles:

• One product, one visible price. Do not leave paper and the electronic label together longer than strictly needed. If they diverge there will be complaints at the till, and you will have to decide case by case which price applies.
• Reconcile first, then remove. Paper comes down once you have checked that the new label shows what the till charges.

Some things outside the label usually stay on paper and are worth deciding explicitly: large offer posters, unit prices on certain products, legal notices, allergen or origin information. The electronic label can show part of this, but does not always replace the promotional poster. Decide what happens to each, and do not leave it to each store’s improvisation.

Keep a contingency procedure as well: what to do if communication with the labels fails on a big promotion day. Usually that means backup printing for the affected section and a named person who decides when to activate it.

Phase 7. Maintenance: batteries, faulty labels and firmware

Once live, the project becomes a recurring service. It is worth planning from the start.

Batteries

E-paper labels use energy almost only when the content changes, so life depends on how often the screen refreshes, on temperature and on radio quality. Manufacturers talk about several years, but that figure belongs to the manufacturer and to specific conditions; ask for the estimate for your usage pattern (promotions, chilled areas, refreshes per day), not the catalogue figure.

What to put in writing:

• Whether the cell is replaceable or the whole label is swapped.
• Who and when carries out replacements, and how you are warned before a label runs out (the platform should show battery level).
• What happens to the waste. Used batteries and equipment are regulated waste. Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 on batteries and waste batteries governs their design and end-of-life management, including requirements that portable batteries be removable and replaceable by the end user, with the exceptions it sets out. Ask the vendor how they meet what applies to them and who handles collection and recycling.

Broken or silent labels

A share of labels will be damaged by knocks, trolleys, cleaning or tampering, and others will stop communicating. Know the replacement policy in advance: what is replaced free and what is charged, how quickly, and whether there is spare stock in the store itself. A small stock on site stops a shelf going without prices over a weekend.

When a label does not update, the cause can be battery, coverage, pairing or data. The step-by-step diagnosis is in why a label is not updating.

Firmware and platform

Gateways and labels run software that gets updated. Ask whether updates are made remotely, who schedules them, whether they can be postponed in critical periods (campaigns, sales), and what happens if an update fails halfway. Ask also about configuration backups and access control on the platform, because changing prices from it is a capability that must be logged and limited to the right people.

Ongoing monitoring

A good indicator is the share of labels that, at a given moment, show the correct price against the till. Check it with a periodic sample in each store. It is more useful than any vendor report, because it measures what the customer sees.

Common mistakes

This list comes from where projects tend to go wrong, not from any statistic; use it as a checklist.

1. Starting with hardware and leaving data for last. You buy the labels and then find the item master is dirty.
2. Not measuring coverage in the worst areas. Everything works in the main aisle and fails in the chiller or at the back of the store.
3. A pilot with no success criteria. It drags on indefinitely or is declared fine “because it’s going well”.
4. Accepting timelines and guarantees by word of mouth. What is not in the contract does not exist, especially label replacement and batteries.
5. Leaving it unclear who changes prices. Two systems writing the price (ERP and platform) end up disagreeing.
6. Rolling out too fast. The same error is replicated across many stores before it is spotted.
7. A single, long training session. It is forgotten within weeks.
8. Removing paper before reconciling with the till.
9. Not planning maintenance. Batteries, replacements and updates with no owner.
10. Measuring success only by hours saved. It ignores price errors avoided, promotion speed and better price compliance.

Checklist of questions for the vendor

• How is the number of gateways calculated, and can I see the coverage survey?
• Which product codes does it support (EAN, SKU, PLU)? How does it handle products without a code?
• How does it integrate with my ERP or POS, and who maintains that integration?
• What does the pilot include, and what happens if the criteria are not met?
• Which battery does each model use, is it replaceable and who changes it?
• What replacement policy and what support, with what hours?
• How are updates, backups and access managed?
• What happens to my data and hardware if I change vendor?

The last question is important and almost never asked: dependence on a label vendor is high once labels are across the whole chain. Ask about open standards too, and what leaving would cost.

What next

If you are still deciding whether the project pays off, start with the total cost calculator. If the decision is made and you want to know where to begin, the pilot service is the next step. And if your question is how a price gets from your management software to the shelf, see how the system works inside.

This guide is published by Keonex, which develops software and label solutions for retail; the content is general and does not describe Keonex timelines, prices or terms.