Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods and services available for sale online? If so, then it’s a good idea to think about providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting tools allow your prospects to have the cost of a foreign currency amount translated to their home currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets your visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows your customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s quite simple to add currency conversion via a plugin to your WP web site, allowing your prospective customers to quickly calculate the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WordPress Free Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Great plugin features include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of online store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WP administration area …
The plugin settings section offers you a number of configuration settings …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default currency is ’USD’ …
You can specify which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can select another provider, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need to enter an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you want the currency exchange rates to be updated by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, simply ignore this setting …
Configure the remainder of the settings to suit your own needs and don’t forget to click Save Changes when done …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to WP pages using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
Using Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets with no programming skills or knowledge 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 retail an item 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 information page.
All you need to do is add the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (for example, 6.95, 47.00, 129.10, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks after being inserted into your page or post …
After the post has been published, your converted currency amount will then display like this …
Using this example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
Once your content has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as shown in the screenshot below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to specify a different base currency than the one you have selected as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers in countries 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 page …
Once your page or post has been published, your converted currency will then appear as seen below …
Using The Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter 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’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now show on your website’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values with the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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