Are you planning to sell goods or services online worldwide? If so, then you should think about providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency conversion tools allow your site visitors to have the cost of an international currency transaction translated to their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
One benefit of displaying currency conversion on your website is that it allows customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to currency conversion to WordPress using a plugin, allowing your site visitors to easily determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converter
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.
Some of the useful features of this useful plugin include:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Google and Open Exchange Rates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Translation support
Note: This 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 on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin user navigation menu …
The plugin settings area offers you a number of configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default currency is ’USD’ …
Similarly, you can choose which data provider you want to use from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, such as FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you want to update the exchange rates by selecting 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 (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Configure the remainder of the settings according to your preferences and remember to click the Save Changes button when you have configured this page …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to any of your WP posts using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Using Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WP pages, posts and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell a product for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 155.25, 197.00, 399.99, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks after being inserted into a post or page …
Once the information has been published, your currency conversion will display like this …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
Once your post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one you have selected as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing your page or post, the currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your site’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now appear on the sidebar with the options you have specified …
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) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Platforms
As mentioned earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and 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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