Are you planning to sell products online worldwide? If so, you should think about providing your web visitors with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting software allows your customers to have the price of a foreign currency amount translated into their local currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets your customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One benefit of adding currency conversion is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to easily work out the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
The Currencyr useful WordPress plugin includes features such as:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce & Shopp.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web hosting support team to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin navigation menu …
The plugin settings section provides several configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base currency is ‘USD’ …
You can also specify which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can choose one of the other options, such as FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you would like to update the exchange rates by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the rest of the settings and don’t forget to click Save Changes when finished …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to your WP site’s posts using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WordPress posts, pages and widgets without editing your web templates using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail an item on your website for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 89.95, 79.45, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks once you have added it to a post or page …
Once your page has been published, the currency conversion will display as you can see below …
Using the same example, let’s now convert the same price into multiple 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 added to a page …
Once your information has been published, the currency conversion will then display as shown below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to specify a different base currency than the one set 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 customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
After publishing the information, your converted currency will then appear as seen below …
How To Use The Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on your sidebar menu with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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 change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts using the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Platform Integration
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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