Are you planning to set up an e-commerce site, or sell goods and services online? If so, then here’s a great idea: think about providing your potential customers with the convenience of currency conversion on your site.
Currency converting software tools allow your visitors to convert foreign currency pricing into their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows your customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
The obvious benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it lets visitors view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s quite easy and simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to easily work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s 100% free to install and use on your website or blog.
Some of the features of this plugin include:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Translation support
Important: This plugin needs 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. Alternatively, ask your web host to update 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” …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you can get to the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin user area …
The plugin settings page offers you a number of configuration options …
For example, you can choose a base currency from a drop-down menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
You can choose a data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can choose one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can specify how frequently you want the currency exchange rates to update by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, simply ignore this option …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and remember to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you have configured all the settings on this page …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress post or page using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages 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 posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell goods for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To display this information, you will need to insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 97.00, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode will look after being inserted into a page or post …
After publishing the page or post, your converted currency will appear as shown below …
Using this example, let’s now translate the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once your page or post has been published, the converted currency will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to use a different base currency than the one set as the default.
For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
After publishing your information, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress dashboard 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 currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency converter will now show on your sidebar menu with the options 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, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as shown below …
If you modify this symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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