Are you planning to set up an e-commerce site, or sell goods internationally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with currency conversion.
Currency conversion software lets your site visitors translate foreign currency amounts to their local currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also allows your visitors and customers to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion is that it lets customers view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily determine the cost of your products.
WP Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s completely free!
Great plugin features include:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Google and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Translation support
Important: This plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to update your PHP server installation if required.
***
You can install the Currencyr 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 visit the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your dashboard navigation menu …
The plugin settings screen provides many configuration settings …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu if you want something other than the default option ‘USD’ …
You can specify a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default option 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, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can choose how frequently you would like the currency exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The 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, just ignore this setting …
Edit the remainder of the settings and click the Save Changes button when done …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to any of your WordPress blog’s pages or posts using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell an item for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, just add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 165.49, 29.95, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode should look when inserting it into a page …
After publishing the page or post, the converted currency will then display as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
After publishing the content, your currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like 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 customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once your post or page has been published, your converted currency will then appear as seen below …
Currencyr Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets in your WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter will now display on your site’s sidebar with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values with a forward slash as shown below …
If you enter another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from 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:
***
"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)