Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods or services available for sale internationally? If so, then it’s a good idea to consider providing your web visitors with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce site.
Currency conversion lets your prospective customers translate international currency pricing to their local currency at the buying or checkout stage. It also lets your visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
The obvious benefit of displaying currency conversion is that it lets customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency conversion plugin to your website, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily work out the cost of your goods.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Great plugin features include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google and Open Exchange Rates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Alternatively, ask your webhosting support team to update your PHP server installation if needed.
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You can install the 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 selecting Currencyr from your WordPress admin menu …
The plugin settings page offers you many configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base currency is ‘USD’ …
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 also choose one of the other options, like FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how often you would like the currency exchange rates to update 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. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, simply ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the settings and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
Once you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to your WordPress posts using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets without touching code using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling goods online for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To display this information, simply insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (for example, 89.95, 97.00, 2499.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode will look when inserting it into the post …
Once the post has been published, your currency conversion will display as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s also display the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
Once the post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to specify a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once your page has been published, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your site’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from 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 settings as shown below (add the currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now display on your sidebar with the settings you have selected …
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 several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you change the symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WordPress E-Commerce
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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