Do you plan to sell goods and services online worldwide? If so, you may want to think about providing users with a currency conversion tool.
Currency converting tools let your customers translate foreign currency amounts into their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows customers to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it lets visitors see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is built with WordPress, you can add a currency converter to your WordPress site, allowing your visitors to quickly work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converter For WordPress
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your site.
This currency conversion plugin features:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google & European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Translation support
Note: This plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
You can also specify any supported data provider from a dropdown menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another provider, like European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can specify how frequently you would like to update the 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 (such as WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this option …
Edit the rest of the settings and don’t forget to click Save Changes when you have finished configuring all of your settings …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can start adding currency conversion to all of your WP blog’s posts using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WordPress posts, pages and widgets with no coding knowledge using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling an item online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show this amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 22.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserting it into your page …
After the content has been published, your converted currency amount will display as seen below …
Using the above example, let’s also convert the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
After publishing your post or page, the converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to use a different base currency than the one set as the default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European visitors (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
Once the page or post has been published, your currency conversion will then display as seen below …
Using The Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar section using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now appear on your sidebar with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to 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) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image source: plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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