Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making products available for sale worldwide? If so, you may want to think about providing your web visitors with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion software lets your prospective customers translate international currency pricing into their local currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets your customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add a currency converter to your WordPress web site, allowing your prospective customers to quickly and easily work out the cost of your products.
WP Currency Converting Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
The Currencyr currency conversion WP plugin includes advanced features like:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with a number of online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Full language 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 webhosting provider to update your PHP.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a dropdown menu if you want a different currency than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can choose which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also 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’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr 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 edit the jQuery settings, simply ignore this section …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your needs and click the ‘Save Changes’ button when done …
When you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any WP post or page using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
Using Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets without touching your web templates using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling a product on your website for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, you will need to add the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 165.49, 189.00, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to your post or page …
After publishing the page, the converted currency amount will then appear like this …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
After publishing your post, the currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European visitors (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to a page …
Once your page or post has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as shown below …
Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now show on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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 several currencies.
You can select a different 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 you can see in the example below …
If you select another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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