Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods and services available for sale globally? If so, then you should probably think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to have the cost of an international currency transaction converted to their local currency at the point of sale. It also lets visitors and customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of showing currency conversion on your website is that it allows your customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy to add currency conversion via a plugin to WordPress, allowing your visitors to easily understand the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converter
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your WP website.
Some of the many features of this plugin include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Supports full translations
Note: 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 on your server. Alternatively, ask your webhosting provider to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin user area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select a base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu. The default option is (‘USD’) …
Similarly, you can select which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select another provider, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the currency 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 lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this option …
Configure the remainder of the settings to suit your needs and remember to click Save Changes when done …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WordPress website’s posts and pages using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) with this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to 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 sell a product on your website for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 175.00, 79.45, 129.10, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode will look after being inserted into the post …
After your post or page has been published, your currency conversion will display as seen below …
Using this example, let’s also translate the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
Once the post or page has been published, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to select a different base currency than the one set as the default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
Once your post or page has been published, your converted currency will then appear as you can see below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now appear on the sidebar menu with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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 multiple 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 using a forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As mentioned earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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