Do you sell any products online globally? If so, then you should probably consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency converting tools let your customers have the cost of a foreign currency amount converted to their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also allows customers to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One benefit of showing currency conversion on your website is that it allows customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add a currency converter to currency conversion to your WordPress website via a plugin, allowing your site visitors to quickly calculate the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Conversion Plugin For WP Web Sites
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your site.
Great plugin features include the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google & FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Supports full translations
Important: This plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your webhosting company to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin user navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
You can select which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how frequently you would like to update the 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 (e.g. WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings according to your own needs and remember to click Save Changes when finished …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to any of your WordPress blog’s posts and pages using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets without having to edit 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 goods online for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To do this, you will need to insert the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 188.35, 197.00, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode will look after being added to the product page …
When your information has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing your page or post, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to specify a different base currency than the one you have selected as your default.
For example, if you have specified 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 …
Here’s how the shortcode looks when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post or page, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Using The Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets location …
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 with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you 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) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you enter another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As mentioned earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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