Do you plan to sell your products online to an international market? If so, then here’s a good idea: think about providing users with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion software lets your customers have the cost of a foreign currency transaction converted to their local currency at the buying or checkout stage. It also lets your visitors view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their home currency.
One great benefit of putting currency conversion is that it allows visitors to see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add a currency converter to your site, allowing your prospective customers to easily work out the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WordPress
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, 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 WP website or blog.
Useful plugin features include:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web hosting support team to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select a base currency from a dropdown menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option ’USD’ …
Similarly, you can select any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another option, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need to enter an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you would like the exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to change the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the settings according to your needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
Once you have configured your settings, you can add currency conversion to WordPress website’s posts and pages using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling goods for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 29.95, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode will look after being inserted into a product page …
After publishing the post or page, the currency conversion will appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
Once your post or page has been published, your converted currency will then display as shown in the example below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to select a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
Once your content has been published, your converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
Using The Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using a widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your sidebar menu with the settings 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 change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as shown below …
If you change the symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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