Are you planning to set up an e-commerce site with WordPress, or sell goods or services worldwide? If so, then here’s a good idea: think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion tool.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to convert foreign currency transactions to their home currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also allows visitors and customers to view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
The obvious advantage of displaying currency conversion on your site is that it allows your customers to see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s simple to add a currency converter to currency conversion to your website or blog via a plugin, allowing your visitors to easily understand the cost of your goods.
WP Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Useful plugin features include the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various online shopping plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Full support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your webhosting support team to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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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 “Install Now” …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin user navigation menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings area …
For example, you can select your base currency from a drop-down menu if you want a different currency than the default option (USD) …
You can also specify which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. The default option 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 choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing 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 WordPress plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own preferences and don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when finished …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to WP blog’s pages and posts using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets with no web coding knowledge or skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WP 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 display the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is add the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 22.00, 1356.87, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks after you have inserted it into your page …
After publishing the post or page, your currency conversion will appear as shown below …
Using this example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when added to a post …
Once your post has been published, your currency conversion will then display as seen below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one set as your 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 customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing your post, your converted currency amounts will then appear like this …
How To Use The Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now show on your sidebar with the options you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you 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, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as shown below …
If you change the symbol and resave your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Platform Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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