Do you plan to sell goods and services online to a global audience? If so, you should think about providing your potential customers with currency conversion.
Currency conversion lets your site visitors translate foreign currency prices to their local currency when purchasing products on e-commerce sites. It also allows your customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of providing currency conversion is that it allows visitors to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your site, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily understand the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WP Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique converter tooltip. And, it’s free!
This plugin features:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo! & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Supports full translations
Important: This plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Ask your web host to update your PHP server installation if necessary.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking “Install Now” …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you can get to the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your WP administration menu …
The plugin settings screen provides various configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default currency is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
You can choose a data provider from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings according to your preferences and remember to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when finished …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to all of your WP blog’s posts using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WP posts, pages and widgets with no programming skills or knowledge 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 sell an item for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show the price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 37.95, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks after being added to your post or page …
After publishing the page or post, the currency conversion will appear like this …
Using the above example, let’s also translate the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
Once the post has been published, the converted currency amounts will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use a different base currency than the one set as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing your post or page, your converted currency will then appear as you can see below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add the currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter will now display on your sidebar with the options 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 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 field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices with a forward slash as shown below …
If you enter another symbol and update your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
WordPress E-Commerce
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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