Are you planning to set up an e-commerce website using WordPress, or sell goods internationally? If so, then you may want to think about providing users with currency conversion.
Currency converting tools let your site visitors convert international currency prices into their home currency when purchasing or checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also lets your visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One benefit of putting currency conversion on your website is that it allows visitors to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for purchasers to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your WP website or blog, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Free Currency Conversion Plugin For WP Websites
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
The Currencyr plugin includes advanced features like:
- In-line converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Google and Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Full translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires 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. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings page by selecting Currencyr from your admin user area …
This takes you to the plugin settings area …
For example, you can select your base currency from a dropdown menu if you want a different currency than the default option (USD) …
You can select a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, such as European Central Bank 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 currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, just ignore this option …
Configure the rest of the plugin settings and don’t forget to click Save Changes when finished …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to your WP pages using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) with this plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WordPress posts, pages and widgets with no programming knowledge 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 an item for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
To display this information, simply insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 97.00, 399.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode will look after you have inserted it into the page …
Once your page has been published, your converted currency amount will then display like this …
Using the above example, let’s now display the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when added to a page …
After publishing your information, the currency conversion will then display as shown below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to specify a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to visitors in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the page, your currency conversion will then appear as shown below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar section using a widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter tool will now display on your website’s sidebar with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol 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, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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