Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products to an international customer base? If so, then here’s a great idea: consider providing your potential customers with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce site.
Currency conversion software lets your customers have the price of an international currency transaction converted into their local currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also allows your visitors to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One great benefit of putting currency conversion on your website is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to easily work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converting Tool For WP Sites
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique converter tooltip. And, it’s also free to install and use on your WP website.
Some of the many features of this useful plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with a number of online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Support for language translations
Note: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Alternatively, ask your web hosting provider to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion 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 access the plugin’s settings page by choosing Currencyr from your admin user menu …
The plugin settings screen provides a number of configuration settings …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ drop-down menu. The default currency is ’USD’ …
Similarly, you can specify which data provider you want to use from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another option, such as European Central Bank or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can specify 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 lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this option …
Edit the rest of the settings and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WP post or page using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress 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 pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling goods for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, just insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 22.00, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode looks after being inserted into your post …
After publishing your information, the converted currency will then appear as you can see in the example below …
Using the same example, let’s also translate the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
After publishing your information, the converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one set 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 visitors in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
After publishing your page or post, your converted currency amounts will then display like this …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now show on your website’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the 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 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 example below …
If you specify another symbol and update your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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