Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods available for sale online? If so, then here’s a great idea: consider providing your web visitors with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion lets your prospects have the price of a foreign currency transaction translated to their home currency when checking out products online. It also lets your visitors and customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One benefit of putting currency conversion on your site is that it lets customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s really simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to your website or blog, allowing your visitors to easily understand the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WP Websites & Blogs
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Some of the features of this plugin include:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Google, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Full language translation support
Important: This plugin requires 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 web host 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” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your administration navigation menu …
The plugin settings section provides many configuration options …
For example, you can select a base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu if you want something other than the default option ’United States Dollar’ …
You can select a data provider from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can 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’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how often you would like the exchange rates to update by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the settings and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WordPress pages and posts using a shortcode.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WP pages, posts and widgets with no technical skills or knowledge 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 retail your product on your site for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show the price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also display pricing in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 197.00, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode should look after being added to your page …
After your post or page has been published, the converted currency will appear like this …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when added to a page …
After publishing your post or page, your currency conversion will then display as seen in the screenshot below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to use a different base currency than the one set as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to visitors in 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 your content …
After publishing the page or post, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the example below …
Currencyr Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP dashboard 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 save your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on the sidebar with the options 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 allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change the symbol and update your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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