Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or selling products worldwide? If so, then you should consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency converting software tools allow your prospective customers to convert international currency amounts into their home currency at the point of sale. It also lets visitors view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows your customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your WordPress website, allowing your prospective customers to quickly work out the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WP Websites
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your web site.
The Currencyr useful plugin includes features like the following:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Full translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use 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 plugin from your WP dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin user menu …
The plugin settings page offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option (USD) …
You can specify which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select another provider, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you would like the currency exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, just ignore this setting …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings according to your own needs and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when you have finished configuring this screen …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to any WordPress page or post using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets without touching your web templates 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 retail an item online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To display this information, you simply need to insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 37.95, 129.10, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode should look when inserting it into your page or post …
After publishing your content, your currency conversion will then display as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
Once your page or post has been published, your converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use 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 site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
Once your post or page has been published, your converted currency will then appear as shown in the example below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using a widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the example below (add the currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your sidebar with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices with a forward slash as shown below …
If you select another symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Currencyr Plugin With WordPress-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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