Do you plan to set up an e-commerce site, or sell any products worldwide? If so, then here’s a great idea: think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce website.
Currency conversion lets your visitors have the cost of an international currency transaction converted into their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great benefit of displaying currency conversion is that it allows visitors to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s easy to add currency conversion via a plugin to WordPress, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Currency Conversion Plugin For WP Websites
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Great plugin features include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo! and Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires 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 webhosting provider to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WP admin user area …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu if you prefer something other than the default option ’USD’ …
You can also choose a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can select 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, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how frequently you want the exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the settings and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
After you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page or post using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can easily 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 your WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail an item for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, just add the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 6.95, 47.00, 129.10, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look after being inserted into a post …
After publishing the post, the currency conversion will display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also convert the same amount into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a page …
After publishing the post, the converted currency amounts will then display as you can see below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to specify a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to your content …
After publishing your content, your currency conversion will then display like this …
Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency converter will now display on the sidebar with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr 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 field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Plugin With WP-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce 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 site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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