Are you planning to sell goods online worldwide? If so, then here’s a good idea: consider providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency conversion lets your site visitors have the price of an international currency transaction translated to their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
The obvious benefit of displaying currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s quite simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to your WP website or blog, allowing your customers to quickly calculate the cost of your products.
WP Currency Converting Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WP website.
Some of the features of this plugin include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Full translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires 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 hosting company to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress dashboard menu …
The plugin settings area provides several configuration settings …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default option is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
You can select any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose one of the other options, like FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need to enter an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how often you would like to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings and remember to click Save Changes when you have finished configuring all of your options …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can start adding currency conversion to any WordPress post using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets with no technical skills using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling an item for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To do this, simply add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 188.35, 97.00, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks after being added to the page or post …
After publishing your post, the converted currency will display as you can see below …
Using the above example, let’s also display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
After publishing your post, the converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to select a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, if 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 looks when added to a post …
After publishing the post or page, your converted currency will then appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using The Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter will now show on the sidebar with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you select another symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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