Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or making products available for sale worldwide? If so, then you may want to think about providing your potential customers with the convenience of currency conversion on your web site.
Currency converting tools let your customers have the price of an international currency transaction converted to their home currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets your visitors view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One great advantage of putting currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your site, allowing your visitors to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free!
This useful plugin features:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full support for language translations
Note: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP dashboard menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings area …
For example, you can select a base currency from a dropdown menu. The default currency is (‘USD’) …
You can choose which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can select one of the other options, such as European Central Bank or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you would like to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Configure the remainder of the settings to suit your needs and remember to click Save Changes when finished …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WP website’s pages or posts using widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WordPress posts, pages and widgets without editing your web templates using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling a product on your website for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To display this information, simply insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 175.00, 37.95, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode should look when added to your page …
After publishing your content, your currency conversion will then display as shown below …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
After publishing your post or page, your currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
Once your information has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar menu using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on the sidebar with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices with the forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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