Do you plan to sell goods and services online internationally? If so, then here’s a great idea: think about providing your web visitors with a currency conversion feature.
Currency converting software lets your site visitors have the price of an international currency transaction converted to their local currency at the point of sale. It also allows your customers to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One great benefit of providing currency conversion on your site is that it lets visitors view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency converter to currency conversion to your WordPress site using a plugin, allowing your visitors to easily work out the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WordPress website or blog.
The Currencyr useful plugin includes many advanced features like the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Full support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can access the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your dashboard area …
The plugin settings area offers you various configuration settings …
For example, you can select a base currency from a dropdown menu. The default base currency is (‘USD’) …
You can also select which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need to enter an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you would like the currency exchange rates to be updated by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave these as they are …
Edit the rest of the plugin settings according to your preferences and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress post using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) in this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets without touching your web templates using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell a product on your site for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, you simply need to add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (for example, 6.95, 97.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode should look after being inserted into your post or page …
After publishing the content, the currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
Using this example, let’s also translate 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) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
Once the post has been published, the converted currency amounts will then display as seen in the screenshot below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, suppose you want 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 site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below shows how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
Once your page or post has been published, your converted currency amounts will then appear as you can see in the example below …
Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar menu, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP 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 any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now show on the sidebar with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr 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, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change this symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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