Are you planning to sell goods online worldwide? If so, then you should think about providing your web visitors with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting software allows your customers to have the cost of an international currency transaction converted to their local currency when checking out products on e-commerce sites. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their local currency.
The obvious advantage of putting currency conversion is that it allows visitors to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s easy to add a currency converter to WordPress, allowing your customers to quickly determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
The Currencyr plugin features:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google & FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to update your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking “Install Now” …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your admin area …
This takes you to the plugin settings page …
For example, you can select a base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ drop-down menu if you prefer to use something other than the default option ’USD’ …
You can also specify any supported data provider from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select another option, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select Open Exchange Rates, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how frequently you would like the currency exchange rates to update by selecting an option from the ‘Update Rates’ dropdown menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings and remember to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when finished …
When you have finished configuring your settings, you can start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets with no programming skills or 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 sell goods online for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show the price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also add amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 19.95, 189.00, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode should look after you have inserted it into the product page …
After the post or page has been published, the currency conversion will appear like this …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
After publishing the information, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one you have 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 above shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the page, your converted currency amounts will then appear as seen in the screenshot below …
Using The Currencyr Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website’s sidebar using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ location …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter will now display 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 allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices with a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your web 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 a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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