Are you planning to sell goods and services online internationally? If so, then here’s a great idea: consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your site.
Currency conversion tools let your prospects have the price of an international currency amount converted to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets your visitors and customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of displaying currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to WordPress, allowing your customers to quickly and easily determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WordPress Free Currency Conversion Plugin
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Plugin features include:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings screen by choosing Currencyr from your administration menu …
The plugin settings section offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a drop-down menu. The default option is ’United States Dollar’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from a drop-down menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another option, like FoxRate 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 the currency exchange rates to update by selecting an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Edit the remainder of the settings to suit your own needs and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when finished …
After you have finished configuring your settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WP post or page using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets without touching code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell your product on your site for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 29.95, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to a page …
After the content has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using the above example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
After publishing your page or post, the converted currency amounts will then appear as you can see below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to specify a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site 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 added to a page …
Once your post has been published, your currency conversion will then display like this …
Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget options 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 converter tool will now appear on your website’s sidebar menu with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts with a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change the symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Platforms
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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