Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making products available for sale internationally? If so, then you should probably think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce site.
Currency conversion lets your customers have the cost of a foreign currency transaction translated into their local currency when purchasing products on e-commerce sites. It also allows your visitors and customers to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One great benefit of putting currency conversion on your site is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency converter to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your visitors to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WP Websites
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
The Currencyr currency conversion WordPress plugin features:
- Inline converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Google, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various online store plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Support for language translations
Note: This 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. Ask your webhosting provider to update your PHP server installation if necessary.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu if you want something other than the default option ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can choose which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose another option, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how frequently you would like to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The 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 WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to any WP post using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets with no technical knowledge or skills 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 sell a product online for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To display this information, you simply need to insert the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 189.00, 399.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks after being inserted into the page …
After publishing the post, your currency conversion will appear as shown below …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
After publishing your page or post, your converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to use a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
After publishing the content, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Currencyr Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now show on the sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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 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 modify the symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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