Do you plan to sell goods or services online to an online market? If so, you may want to consider providing your prospects with currency conversion.
Currency conversion software tools let your prospective customers convert foreign currency prices into their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion is that it allows visitors 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 you are a WordPress user, it’s simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to WordPress using a plugin, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily understand the cost of your goods.
WP Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
Some of the features of this plugin include the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Google & Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to update your PHP server installation if required.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking the “Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin user menu …
The plugin settings section provides several configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu if you prefer a different currency than the default option ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can choose which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select another provider, like European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can simply ignore this option …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings and click Save Changes when you have configured all of your settings …
After you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to any of your WP website’s pages or posts using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets with no web coding knowledge or skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell a product for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, simply add the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 188.35, 97.00, 544.97, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode will look after you have added it to the product page …
Once the post has been published, your converted currency will then appear as you can see below …
Using the above example, let’s now display the same amount into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
After publishing your page, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
After publishing the content, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using The Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar section using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add the currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on the sidebar menu with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you 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, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you choose another symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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