Do you plan to sell goods and services online internationally? If so, then it’s a great idea to think about providing users with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion lets your customers have the cost of an international currency transaction converted to their home currency at the buying or checkout stage. It also allows visitors to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows your customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s quite easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to your WordPress web site, allowing your customers to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s also free!
Some of the useful features of this useful plugin include the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo! and European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires 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 webhosting support team to check and upgrade your PHP server installation if necessary.
***
You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the “Install” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your admin navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can choose a base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu. The default base currency is ’United States Dollar’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, such as FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how often you would like the currency exchange rates to be updated by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to change the jQuery settings, simply ignore this option …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WP website’s pages and posts using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, ZAR, etc …) in this plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets with no programming skills or knowledge 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 are selling a product online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To do this, you will need to add the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 175.00, 189.00, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks after being inserted into the page or post …
After publishing the post, your converted currency will display as shown below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
After publishing your post, your currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to specify a different base currency than the one you have set as your default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when added to your content …
After publishing the content, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Using The Plugin Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your site’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now show on your site’s sidebar menu with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you 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 values using a forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you select another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce web site.
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)