Are you planning to set up a WordPress-based e-commerce site, or sell products online? If so, then here’s a good idea: consider providing your web visitors with currency conversion.
Currency conversion tools let your visitors convert international currency amounts into their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also allows your visitors and customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One advantage of adding currency conversion 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.
If your site is built with WordPress, you can add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to your site using a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily understand the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Currency Conversion Plugin For WordPress
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your web site.
Useful plugin features include the following:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google & European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with various e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full support for language translations
Important: This plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Alternatively, ask your web hosting company to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr 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 configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress dashboard area …
The plugin settings page provides many configuration options …
For example, you can select a base currency from a dropdown menu. The default base currency is (‘USD’) …
Similarly, you can choose a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, like FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the rest of the settings according to your preferences and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to all of your WP blog’s pages using shortcodes and widgets.
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.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WordPress posts, pages and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to pages and posts:
Let’s say that you retail your products online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, just add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 79.45, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode should look after being inserted into your page or post …
Once your post or page has been published, your converted currency will display like this …
Using the same example, let’s now display the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
After publishing your information, the currency conversion 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 with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected 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 non-European visitors (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing your post, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Using The Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the example below (add the currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter tool will now appear 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 change the 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 you can see in the example below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With WordPress e-Commerce Software
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and 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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