Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products online? If so, then it’s a good idea to think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion tool.
Currency conversion software lets your prospects translate foreign currency transactions to their home currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets your customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
One great benefit of putting currency conversion is that it lets customers see and understand prices 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 built with WordPress, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to currency conversion to your website via a plugin, allowing your site visitors to easily understand the cost of your products.
WP Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, 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:
- In-line converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Supports full language translations
Note: This 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. Ask your web hosting company to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install” button …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings section by selecting Currencyr from your admin area …
The plugin settings screen offers you a number of configuration settings …
For example, you can select your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default option is ’US Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can choose any supported data provider from a drop-down menu. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can select another option, such as FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how often you would like to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, simply ignore this option …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your preferences and remember to click Save Changes when you have configured all of your options …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can start adding currency conversion to any WP page using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to WordPress pages, posts and widgets without touching code using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling your product on your website for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, simply insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (e.g. 175.00, 22.00, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look after being inserted into a page …
After publishing your information, your currency conversion will display like this …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing your information, the currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to select a different base currency than the one you have set as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to non-European visitors (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
After publishing your content, your converted currency amounts will then appear as seen in the screenshot below …
Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on your website’s sidebar with the settings you have specified …
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 multiple currencies.
You can select a different 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 shown below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
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 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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