Do you plan to sell products online internationally? If so, you should consider providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion allows your prospects to have the cost of a foreign currency transaction converted to their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets your customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
One benefit of putting currency conversion on your website is that it lets visitors see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s really easy to add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your visitors to easily determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WordPress website.
Some of the many useful features of this plugin include the following:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo! and European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- 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 hosting support team to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the “Install” button …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WP admin user menu …
The plugin settings area offers you a number of configuration options …
For example, you can select a base currency from a drop-down menu if you want something other than the default option (USD) …
You can also specify which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select another provider, such as FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you would like the currency exchange rates to update 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 (such as WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Configure the rest of the settings according to your own preferences and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when done …
Once you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WordPress blog’s posts using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to WP pages, posts and widgets without touching code 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 sell an item online for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display this amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To display this information, you will need to add the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 155.25, 37.95, 544.97, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode should look when inserting it into your page …
After publishing the page, your converted currency will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
Once your content has been published, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one you have selected as your 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 (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
Once your page or post has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar section using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now appear on your website’s sidebar with the settings 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 a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices with the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you enter another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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