Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products to an online customer base? If so, then you should think about providing your prospects with currency conversion.
Currency converting tools allow your visitors to translate foreign currency amounts into their home currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also allows customers to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it lets your customers view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to your site, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily calculate the cost of your goods.
WordPress Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
Some of the features of this plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Translation support
Important: This plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to update your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin user area …
The plugin settings area offers you several configuration settings …
For example, you can select your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default base currency is ’USD’ …
You can also select which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. The default selection 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, you will need to enter an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The 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 …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own needs and remember to click Save Changes when you have finished configuring all of your settings …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to your WordPress website’s pages using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to WP pages, posts and widgets with no web coding skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling your product for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, just insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 188.35, 29.95, 400.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode should look after being inserted into the post …
After publishing the post or page, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Using the same example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing the information, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to use a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
After publishing the information, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using a widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your sidebar with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify a symbol of your choice 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 you can see in the screenshot below …
If you specify another symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
Integration With WordPress e-Commerce Software
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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