Do you plan to sell goods online worldwide? If so, you should consider providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce site.
Currency converting software allows your web visitors to have the price of an international currency amount converted to their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows your visitors and customers to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One advantage of adding currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s really easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your site visitors to easily work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your website or blog.
The Currencyr currency conversion plugin includes features like the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade 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 Now” button …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress admin menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a drop-down menu. The default currency is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can specify 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 one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you want the currency exchange rates to update by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to change the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this setting …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your preferences and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to any of your WordPress posts using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WordPress posts, pages and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell a product for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 22.00, 544.97, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode will look when inserting it into the page or post …
After publishing the post, the currency conversion will display as you can see below …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to a post …
Once the content has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as seen in the example below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
Once the post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then display as seen in the screenshot below …
Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets in your WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on your sidebar menu with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr 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, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you specify another symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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