Are you planning to set up an e-commerce web site with WordPress, or sell goods and services worldwide? If so, you may want to consider providing your potential customers with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce site.
Currency conversion lets your prospective customers have the price of a foreign currency transaction converted to their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also allows your visitors and customers to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows visitors to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to WordPress, allowing your customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. And, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.
Some of the many useful features of this plugin include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Google and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various online store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Support for language translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP. Alternatively, ask your web hosting company to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin menu …
The plugin settings screen offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default currency is ’United States Dollar’ …
You can select which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you want to update the currency exchange rates by selecting 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 (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings and don’t forget to click Save Changes when you have finished configuring this screen …
After you have configured your settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any of your WP blog’s pages using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets without editing code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP pages and posts:
Let’s say that you retail your products online for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To do this, you simply need to add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 197.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks after being inserted into a page or post …
After publishing your page or post, the currency conversion will then display as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using the above example, let’s now translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
Once your page has been published, your currency conversion will then display as shown below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when added to a post …
After publishing your post or page, the converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar area using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now appear on the sidebar menu with the options 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 lets you specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts with the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you change this symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As mentioned earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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