Do you plan to sell any products online worldwide? If so, you may want to think about providing your potential customers with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion lets your customers convert foreign currency transactions into their local currency when purchasing products online. It also lets your customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One advantage of putting currency conversion on your site is that it allows your customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add a currency converter to currency conversion to your web site using a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converting Tool For WP Websites And Blogs
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s also free to install and use on your WP website.
This currency conversion WordPress plugin includes features like the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google & FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatically detects local currency
- 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 currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your webhosting support team to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings section by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress admin user navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings page …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a drop-down menu if you want a different currency than the default option ‘USD’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from a dropdown menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how often you want to update the exchange rates 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 allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings and click Save Changes when done …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WordPress pages using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) in this plugin.
Using Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets with no coding knowledge using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling an item for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 6.95, 189.00, 544.97, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode looks when inserting it into the product page …
Once the post or page has been published, your converted currency amount will then display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a post …
Once your post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
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 say that you want to use a different base currency than the one you have selected as your default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European visitors (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks when added to a page …
After publishing the post or page, your converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar menu using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency converter will now show on your sidebar menu with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol 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 change the symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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