Are you planning to set up an e-commerce site, or sell your products to an overseas market? If so, you should consider providing your potential customers with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion allows your web visitors to have the cost of an international currency transaction converted into their home currency when purchasing products on e-commerce sites. It also allows visitors and customers to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it lets visitors view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s really easy to add currency conversion via a plugin to currency conversion to your WordPress web site via a plugin, allowing your customers to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
WP Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WP website or blog.
This useful plugin includes features like:
- In-line converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Google and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full support for language translations
Important: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Alternatively, ask your web hosting support team to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your admin area …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu if you want a different currency than the default option ’USD’ …
You can also select which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, such as FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how frequently you want the exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when you have configured all the options on this screen …
Once you have configured your plugin settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP pages, posts and widgets without having to mess with your web templates using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell an item online 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 page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 37.95, 399.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode will look when inserting it into the page …
After the page or post has been published, your currency conversion will then display like this …
Using the above example, let’s now translate the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
Once the post has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to specify a different base currency than the one set as the default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
Once your information has been published, your converted currency amounts will then appear as seen in the screenshot below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add the currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on the 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 Currencyr 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) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you enter another symbol and update your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Currencyr Plugin With WP-Compatible e-Commerce Platforms
As mentioned earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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