Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce web site or making goods and services available for sale internationally? If so, then here’s a good idea: think about providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion tools allow your visitors to convert international currency amounts to their home currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also allows your visitors to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
The obvious benefit of showing currency conversion on your website is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency converter to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
This useful plugin features:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Full translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires 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. Alternatively, ask your web hosting provider to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the currency conversion 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 WP dashboard menu …
The plugin settings section provides many configuration options …
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’ …
You can also specify any supported data provider from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose another option, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how frequently you would like to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
Unless there is a reason to change the jQuery settings, you can simply ignore this option …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your needs and click the Save Changes button when finished …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to WordPress site’s pages or posts using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress posts, pages and widgets with no programming skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling a product for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To do this, just add the shortcode below to your post or page …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 97.00, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks when inserting it into your product page …
After publishing your post or page, your converted currency amount will then appear as you can see in the example below …
Using the same example, let’s also translate the same amount into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
Once the information has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors in 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, the converted currency amounts will then appear as you can see below …
Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website or blog’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the example below (add the currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now show on your website’s sidebar with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several 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 a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change the symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Plugin With WP-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you know how to 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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