Do you plan to set up an e-commerce web site, or sell your products worldwide? If so, then you should consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency conversion software allows your prospective customers to have the price of an international currency amount translated to their home currency when checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s really easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to your website or blog, allowing your site visitors to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converter For WP Sites
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
This currency conversion plugin features:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of online store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Translation support
Note: This plugin needs 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 on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP dashboard 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 selecting Currencyr from your WordPress admin menu …
The plugin settings section offers you various configuration settings …
For example, you can select a base currency from a drop-down menu. The default option is (‘USD’) …
Similarly, you can specify any supported data provider from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can select another provider, like FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how frequently you would like to update the exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
Once you have configured your settings, you can add currency conversion to any WordPress post using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP posts, pages and widgets without touching your web templates using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling your product for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 97.00, 149.00, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode will look after being added to your post or page …
After publishing the page or post, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to a post …
Once the post or page has been published, the converted currency will then display as seen below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to select a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
After publishing the post or page, the currency conversion will then display as you can see in the example below …
How To Use The Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your site’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your website’s sidebar with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you enter another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As stated earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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