Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods and services available for sale to an overseas market? If so, then here’s a great idea: consider providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your site.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to convert foreign currency pricing to their home currency at the buying or checkout stage. It also allows your customers to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it allows your customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s really easy to add currency conversion using a plugin to WordPress, allowing your visitors to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
WP Currency Conversion Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your website or blog.
The Currencyr useful plugin includes great features like the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Support for language translations
Note: This plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your web hosting support team to upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WP admin menu …
The plugin settings section offers you various configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu if you want something other than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can specify which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select another option, like FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how often you would like to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the remainder of the settings and don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you have finished configuring this screen …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WP post or page using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
How To Use Shortcodes
You can add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets without touching your web templates using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling an item 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 page.
To display this information, simply insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 89.95, 197.00, 129.10, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode looks after you have added it to your post or page …
After publishing the page, your currency conversion will appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the shortcode appears when added to a post …
After publishing the page or post, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to specify a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, if 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 now shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post, the converted currency amounts will then display like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add the currency codes you want to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on your site’s sidebar with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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