Do you plan to set up an e-commerce site with WordPress, or sell products to a foreign market? If so, you should probably think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce website.
Currency conversion software tools let your site visitors translate foreign currency pricing to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also allows customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great advantage of showing currency conversion is that it lets customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
WP Currency Converting Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Some of the many useful features of this great plugin include:
- In-line converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various online store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Full support for language translations
Important: This plugin requires 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. Ask your webhosting provider to update your PHP server installation if needed.
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You can install the currency conversion 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 visit the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your dashboard navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select a base currency from a drop-down menu. The default base currency is ’US Dollar’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the settings and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to all of your WordPress posts or pages using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
Using Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets without editing your web templates using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell an item online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To do this, you simply need to insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 19.95, 79.45, 1356.87, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode will look after being added to a page or post …
After publishing your page, your converted currency will then display like this …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when added to a page …
After publishing the page or post, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to use a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to a page …
Once the post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
How To Use The Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on your site’s sidebar with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts using a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Currencyr Plugin With WP-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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