Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce web site or making products available for sale worldwide? If so, you may want to consider providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion lets your prospects have the price of an international currency amount translated to their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion to your website is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s quite easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to your web site using a plugin, allowing your visitors to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your web site.
Some of the many useful features of this plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates & FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Supports full translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your webhosting provider to check and upgrade your PHP.
***
You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings page by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress administration area …
The plugin settings page provides several configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ drop-down menu. The default currency is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can choose a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another option, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown 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 (such as WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, you can simply ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings to suit your own preferences and remember to click Save Changes when done …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to your WordPress posts or pages using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets with no coding knowledge using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell an item online for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 175.00, 47.00, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode should look once you have inserted it into the page or post …
Once your content has been published, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when added to your content …
Once the content has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to specify 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 e-commerce pages targeted to non-European visitors (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when added to a post …
Once your page has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using The Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion 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 area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
The currency converter will now display on the sidebar with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as shown below …
If you enter another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Platforms
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)