Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making products available for sale worldwide? If so, then here’s a good idea: think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion tools let your prospective customers convert foreign currency prices into their local currency at the point of sale. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add a currency converter to your site, allowing your customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
WordPress Currency Converting Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
The Currencyr useful plugin includes features like:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your web host to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
When the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress admin user area …
The plugin settings area offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu if you prefer something other than the default option ’United States Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can specify which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another provider, such as European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you would like to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, simply ignore this section …
Edit the remainder of the settings and click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you have finished configuring all the options in this screen …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to any WordPress post or page using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets without having to mess with code 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 retail a product for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To do this, simply add the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 16.95, 97.00, 400.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks after being added to a post …
After publishing your page or post, your converted currency will then appear like this …
Using the same example, let’s now display the same amount into different currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post or page, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one set as your default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
Once the content has been published, the currency conversion will then display as shown below …
How To Use The Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website or blog’s sidebar area using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click Save to save your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now appear on your 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 section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values with the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you enter another symbol and update your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you know how to 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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