Are you planning to sell goods online internationally? If so, you should probably think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting tools let your visitors translate international currency pricing to their home currency when purchasing products on e-commerce sites. It also lets your visitors and customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
The obvious advantage of adding currency conversion is that it allows your customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy to add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to quickly understand the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WP Currency Conversion Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Some of the useful features of this great plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Translation support
Important: This plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Alternatively, ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP server installation if required.
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You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install Now” button …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can access the plugin’s settings area by choosing Currencyr from your administration menu …
The plugin settings page provides several configuration settings …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu. The default option is ’United States Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can select any supported data provider from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select another option, like FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you want the exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own preferences and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets with no programming knowledge 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 are selling your product on your site for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
All you need to do is add the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 165.49, 97.00, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks after being added to the page …
After publishing the post, your currency conversion will display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same amount into different 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 appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing the page, the currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, if 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 …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
After publishing the information, your converted currency will then appear as shown in the example below …
Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add the currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
The currency converter will now show on the sidebar with the settings you have specified …
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 change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts with the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you choose another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, 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 e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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