Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods or services available for sale to an online customer base? If so, you should consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency converting software tools allow your prospective customers to translate international currency pricing into their home currency when purchasing or checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also lets your customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows visitors to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to WordPress, allowing your prospective customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converter For WordPress
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
Plugin features include:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Full language translation support
Important: This plugin needs 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 check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration menu …
The plugin settings screen provides various configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ drop-down menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can select which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default provider is Yahoo Finance, but you can select another provider, such as European Central Bank or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you would like the 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 (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Edit the remainder of the settings according to your needs and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when you have configured this page …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to any WordPress post using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets with no programming skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling an item for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show your amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is add the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 175.00, 47.00, 400.00, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode should look after being inserted into a page …
After publishing the page, your converted currency will then appear as shown below …
Using this example, let’s also display the same amount into multiple currency formats.
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 appears when added to a page …
After publishing your information, your currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as the 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 customers in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing your page, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using The Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion 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 below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now show on your sidebar menu 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 several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values using a forward slash as shown below …
If you change this symbol and resave your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you know how to 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)