Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce web site or making products available for sale online? If so, then here’s a great idea: think about providing your web visitors with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce website.
Currency conversion lets your visitors translate foreign currency transactions into their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets your customers 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 to your site is that it allows visitors to see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s quite simple to add a currency converter to your web site, allowing your prospective customers to quickly understand the cost of your goods.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your web site.
This useful WordPress plugin includes practical features such as:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like 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 a number of online shopping plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking the “Install” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings area by choosing Currencyr from your WP administration navigation menu …
The plugin settings area offers you several configuration settings …
For example, you can select a base currency from a drop-down menu if you want a different currency than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can specify any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you would like the exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates dropdown 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 (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, you can simply ignore this section …
Edit the rest of the settings to suit your preferences and remember to click Save Changes when finished …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to your WordPress pages or posts using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge or skills 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 are selling your products on your site for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 89.95, 37.95, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode will look when inserting it into your page …
After publishing your page or post, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
Once the page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as shown below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one set as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to visitors in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to a post …
Once your page has been published, the converted currency amounts will then display as you can see below …
Currencyr Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your site’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now show on your sidebar with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts using the forward slash as shown below …
If you change the symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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