Do you plan to set up an e-commerce site, or sell your products online? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency conversion tools allow your prospects to have the cost of a foreign currency amount translated into their home currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets your visitors see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows your customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to your website, allowing your visitors to quickly work out the cost of your products.
WP Free Currency Converting Plugin – 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 also free!
Some of the many useful features of this plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires 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 “Install Now” …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can get to the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress administration menu …
The plugin settings page provides many configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default option is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can select a data provider from a dropdown menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, such as European Central Bank 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 would like to update the currency exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings according to your needs and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to any of your WP site’s posts or pages using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP posts, pages and widgets without touching your web templates 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 fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 37.95, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode should look when added to your product page …
After the post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s now convert the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to a page …
After publishing your information, your converted currency will then appear as you can see 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 in this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use 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 e-commerce pages targeted to customers in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
Once your post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then display as seen below …
Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP 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 below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now show on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify the symbol 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) …
Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change this symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As mentioned earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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