Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or making goods available for sale to a foreign audience? If so, then it’s a good idea to think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your site.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to have the cost of an international currency transaction translated to their home currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also lets visitors and customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion to your website is that it allows visitors to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is built using WordPress, it’s easy to add a currency conversion plugin to WordPress, allowing your prospective customers to quickly calculate the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Some of the features of this useful plugin include the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google and European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Full support for language translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web hosting provider to check and upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you can access the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin user navigation menu …
The plugin settings area 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 ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can specify which data provider you want to use from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can choose another provider, like 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) will be required …
You can select how often you would like to update the exchange rates by selecting an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when finished …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to all of your WordPress site’s pages or posts using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets with no web coding skills using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling a product online for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, just add the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 16.95, 47.00, 129.10, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode will look after you have inserted it into your product page …
When the information has been published, the converted currency will appear like this …
Using this example, let’s now convert the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post, the converted currency amounts will then appear as shown in the example below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to use 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 e-commerce pages targeted to non-European customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once the post has been published, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the screenshot below …
How To Use The Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar section using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter will now display on the sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you 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) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change the symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Software
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopp, 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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