Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making products available for sale online? If so, you may want to think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting software tools let your customers have the cost of an international currency transaction converted to their local currency at the point of sale. It also allows your visitors to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion is that it lets your customers view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your WordPress site, allowing your customers to easily understand the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Great plugin features include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Support for language translations
Important: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the “Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration area …
The plugin settings section provides many configuration options …
For example, you can select a base currency from a dropdown menu. The default option is ’USD’ …
You can also select which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you would like to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown 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 there is a reason to change the jQuery settings, simply ignore this option …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings to suit your own needs and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when you have finished configuring this screen …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to WordPress blog’s pages using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets without having to edit code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail your product online for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 89.95, 189.00, 129.10, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserting it into your product page …
After publishing your post or page, the converted currency amount will appear as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s also display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
After publishing the page or post, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to use a different base currency than the one set as the 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 customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to your content …
After publishing the content, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website’s sidebar section using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add any currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now display on the sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional 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 select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you modify the symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Software
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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