Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or selling products online? If so, you may want to think about providing users with currency conversion.
Currency converting tools let your visitors have the price of a foreign currency transaction converted into their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s quite simple to add a currency converter to your website, allowing your prospective customers to easily work out the cost of your goods.
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 100% free to install and use on your site.
Some of the useful features of this plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration menu …
The plugin settings page provides many configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option (USD) …
Similarly, you can choose which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can choose one of the other options, such as FoxRate 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 specify how frequently you would like to update the exchange rates by selecting 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 WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the settings and click Save Changes when you have configured all the options in this screen …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WP pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WP pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling goods online for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, simply add the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 165.49, 189.00, 399.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks after being added to your post or page …
After publishing the page, your currency conversion will appear as seen below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when added to your content …
After publishing the information, your converted currency will then display as you can see in the screenshot below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to specify a different base currency than the one set as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode looks when added to a page …
Once your post has been published, the converted currency will then display like this …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now display on the sidebar with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify a symbol of your choice 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 currency amounts with the forward slash as shown below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Platforms
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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