Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products to a global market? If so, then you may want to consider providing your potential customers with currency conversion.
Currency conversion software tools allow your prospects to convert foreign currency amounts to their home currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
One great advantage of displaying currency conversion on your website is that it allows customers to see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s easy and simple to add a currency converter to your WordPress website or blog, allowing your prospective customers to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s free to install and use on your website.
This currency conversion WP plugin includes many advanced features like the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Supports full translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web hosting provider to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress administration menu …
The plugin settings screen offers you many configuration options …
For example, you can choose a base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu. The default currency is ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can specify any supported data provider from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how often you want the currency exchange rates to update by choosing 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).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, simply ignore this section …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings and click Save Changes when done …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any WP post using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WP pages, posts and widgets with no programming knowledge using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell goods for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To do this, simply insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (for example, 175.00, 189.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when inserting it into a page …
Once your post has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Using the above example, let’s now display the same amount into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to a post …
Once the page has been published, your converted currency will then display as shown below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when you add it to your content …
Once the page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets from the WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as shown below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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