Do you plan to set up an e-commerce site, or sell your products globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce website.
Currency converting tools allow your prospects to have the price of an international currency transaction converted into their local currency when checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also allows visitors to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it lets visitors view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to WordPress, allowing your visitors to easily determine the cost of your products.
WP Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your site.
Some of the many features of this great plugin include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo! and Open Exchange Rates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Translation support
Note: This plugin needs your server to be running 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 webhosting company to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your WP admin user navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a dropdown menu if you prefer something other than the default option ‘USD’ …
You can also select any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how frequently you would like the currency exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to change the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the remainder of the settings and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to WordPress pages or posts using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to 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 Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WP posts, pages and widgets with no programming knowledge or 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 a product online for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To display this information, you simply need to insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (e.g. 155.25, 97.00, 2499.99, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to your product page …
After publishing your post, your converted currency amount will then display as shown in the example below …
Using the same example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
After publishing your post or page, your currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below shows how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the page, your converted currency amounts will then display as shown in the example below …
Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your site’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as shown below …
If you specify another symbol and update your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Platform Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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