Do you plan to sell your products online worldwide? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your web visitors with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency converting software lets your customers translate foreign currency prices into their home currency at the buying or checkout phase. It also lets visitors see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own local currency.
One benefit of showing currency conversion is that it allows your customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s really easy and simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily work out the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WordPress Free Currency Conversion Plugin
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique converter tooltip. And, it’s also free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
Some of the many useful features of this great plugin include:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Google and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various online store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Supports full language translations
Note: This 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. Ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your admin user area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu. The default option is ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can specify a data provider from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also choose another option, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how often you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this setting …
Edit the remainder of the settings and click the ‘Save Changes’ button when finished …
After you have configured your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to any WP post or page using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no web coding skills 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 your products online for a fixed 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, simply add the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 188.35, 29.95, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode should look after being inserted into your page …
After your information has been published, your converted currency amount will display as shown in the example below …
Using the above example, let’s also translate the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode appears when added to a post …
Once your information has been published, your currency conversion will then display as you can see below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when inserted into your content …
After publishing your post or page, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar menu using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, select Appearance > Widgets from your WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add the currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
Your currency converter will now display on the sidebar menu 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 a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you specify another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now