Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products online? If so, then here’s a great idea: think about providing your web visitors with the convenience of currency conversion on your site.
Currency conversion software lets your prospective customers have the price of a foreign currency transaction translated into their local currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also lets your visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One advantage of displaying currency conversion is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to WordPress, allowing your customers to quickly and easily work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. And, it’s 100% free!
The Currencyr plugin includes practical features like:
- In-line 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
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Support for language translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Alternatively, ask your webhosting company to upgrade your PHP server installation if necessary.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can get to the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress administration menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can select your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default currency is ’USD’ …
Similarly, you can select a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can select another provider, such as FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how often you would like to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The Currencyr 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 (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings to suit your own needs and remember to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when done …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to any WordPress post or page using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Plugin Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets without editing your web templates 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 your product 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 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. 165.49, 197.00, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look after being inserted into a product page …
After the post or page has been published, the converted currency will then display as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same amount into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a post …
After publishing your content, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, if 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 …
Here’s how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
After publishing your post, the converted currency amounts will then appear as seen below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter will now display on your site’s sidebar with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the 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, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as shown below …
If you change this symbol and resave your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
Integration With WordPress e-Commerce Platforms
As described earlier, the plugin integrates 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 know how to easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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