Are you planning to sell goods online worldwide? If so, you should consider providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion software tools allow your customers to have the cost of a foreign currency amount converted into their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also allows your visitors to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it lets customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s simple to add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
WordPress Free Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s also free!
Great plugin features include the following:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google and European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Supports full translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
***
You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings screen by selecting Currencyr from your dashboard menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default currency is ‘USD’ …
You can select which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose another option, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you want the currency exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WP post or page using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, ZAR, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no coding skills using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you retail your product for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To display this information, you simply need to insert the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also display pricing in dollars and cents (e.g. 89.95, 22.00, 149.00, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserting it into a page …
Once the information has been published, your converted currency will appear like this …
Using the same example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode appears when added to your content …
After publishing the post, the converted currency amounts will then appear as seen below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to select a different base currency than the one you have set as your default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
After publishing the post or page, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the example below …
How To Use The Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on your sidebar menu with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change this symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Software
As mentioned earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)