Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or selling products globally? If so, then it’s a good idea to consider providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce web site.
Currency conversion software allows your site visitors to have the price of an international currency amount converted to their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets your visitors see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows customers to see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s quite simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your visitors to quickly determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Currency Converter For WordPress
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Some of the many useful features of this great plugin include the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google & Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various online store plugins like WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Full support for language translations
Important: This 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.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin area …
The plugin settings section provides various configuration options …
For example, you can choose a base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default currency is ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can select any supported data provider from a dropdown menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, simply ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings according to your own preferences and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when done …
After you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to any WordPress page using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no web coding skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell your products for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show this amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 19.95, 197.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to your page …
After publishing your post or page, your currency conversion will display as shown in the screenshot below …
Using the same example, let’s now translate the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post or page, the converted currency will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to specify a different base currency than the one set as the 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 …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
Once the page or post has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using The Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now display on your site’s sidebar with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr 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) …
Separates all your currency values using a forward slash as shown below …
If you change the symbol and resave your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Plugin With WordPress-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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