Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce web site or selling products to a worldwide audience? If so, then you may want to consider providing your prospects with currency conversion.
Currency conversion tools allow your visitors to translate foreign currency prices into their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also allows visitors to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One advantage of adding currency conversion to your website is that it lets customers view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your website or blog, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily calculate the cost of your goods.
WordPress Free Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WP web site.
The Currencyr currency conversion plugin features:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo! and Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Full language translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running 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 check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress admin area …
The plugin settings area offers you various configuration settings …
For example, you can select your base currency from a drop-down menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option (USD) …
Similarly, you can select 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 choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you would like the exchange rates to update by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this option …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings according to your preferences and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
After you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to WordPress website’s pages using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Using Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WordPress posts, pages and widgets without editing 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 retail your product on your website for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To display this information, you simply need to add the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 165.49, 29.95, 400.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks after being added to a page or post …
When your content has been published, your converted currency amount will display like this …
Using the same example, let’s now translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once your content has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to select a different base currency than the one you have set as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the post, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
How To Use The Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website’s sidebar menu using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now show on your sidebar with the options 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 several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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