Are you planning to sell products online worldwide? If so, then it’s a good idea to consider providing users with a currency conversion service.
Currency conversion tools allow your visitors to have the cost of an international currency amount converted into their local currency when checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also allows customers to view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
One advantage of providing currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is built with WordPress, you can add a currency converter to your website or blog, allowing your site visitors to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WP Currency Conversion Plugin
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free!
The Currencyr useful WP plugin features:
- Inline converter
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, like Yahoo! & Open Exchange Rates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with various e-store plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Supports full language translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP.
***
You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install” button …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings section …
For example, you can select a base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default option is ‘USD’ …
You can select any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose one of the other options, like FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can specify how frequently you would like the exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can simply ignore this section …
Configure the remainder of the settings according to your own preferences and click Save Changes when you have finished configuring all of your options …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress post or page using shortcodes.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into 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 WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail a product on your website for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to show the conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, you will need to add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 16.95, 29.95, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to a page …
Once your page or post has been published, the converted currency will then appear as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
Once the page has been published, the converted currency will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use a different base currency than the one set as your 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 non-European visitors (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
Once the page has been published, your converted currency amounts will then display as shown in the example below …
Using The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your website’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
The currency converter will now display on your site’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 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 section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as shown below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopp and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from 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:
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org