Do you plan to set up a WordPress-based e-commerce site, or sell products internationally? If so, then it’s a good idea to consider providing your web visitors with currency conversion.
Currency conversion tools let your prospects have the cost of a foreign currency amount converted to their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets your visitors view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your website is that it lets visitors see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s quite easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to your website or blog via a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to easily determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. And, it’s free!
Great plugin features include:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with various online store plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your webhosting provider to check and upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress admin user menu …
The plugin settings section provides many configuration settings …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
You can choose any supported data provider from a drop-down menu. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance 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 specify how often you want the currency exchange rates to update by selecting an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this setting …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and remember to click Save Changes when done …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to WP pages using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to pages and posts:
Let’s say that you retail your product online for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, simply insert the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 37.95, 129.10, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks after being added to your post or page …
After publishing your post, your currency conversion will display like this …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the information, your converted currency will then appear as seen below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to select a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to visitors in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below shows how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once the page has been published, the currency conversion will then display as you can see below …
Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on the sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several 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 the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Platforms
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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