Are you planning to sell any products online worldwide? If so, you should think about providing your potential customers with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to convert international currency prices into their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also allows your customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One benefit of showing currency conversion is that it allows visitors to see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s quite easy to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to your WP site using a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WordPress Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
The Currencyr useful plugin features:
- Inline converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with a number of online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Support for language translations
Important: This plugin needs 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 on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install” button …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin menu …
The plugin settings section offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ drop-down menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how frequently you would like the currency exchange rates to be updated 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. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the settings according to your needs and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when you have configured all of your options …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to WP website’s pages or posts using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) with this plugin.
Using Currencyr Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no coding skills or knowledge using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell your products on your website for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To display this information, just add the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 165.49, 197.00, 400.00, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks after you have added it to your page …
After publishing the information, the converted currency will appear like this …
Using this example, let’s also display the same amount into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
Once the page or post has been published, your converted currency will then appear as shown in the screenshot below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to select a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, if you have specified 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 …
The example below shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
After publishing the content, the converted currency will then appear as shown below …
Using The Plugin Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website or blog’s sidebar area using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now appear on the sidebar with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the 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 shown below …
If you change this symbol and update your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Platforms
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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