Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or making products available for sale online? If so, you should probably consider providing your prospects with currency conversion.
Currency conversion lets your customers have the cost of a foreign currency transaction converted into their home currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also allows visitors and customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your site is that it allows your customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for visitors to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to your website, allowing your site visitors to quickly and easily calculate the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s free to install and use on your WordPress web site.
This currency conversion WordPress plugin includes great features like the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Supports full language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the ”Install Now” button …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your admin area …
The plugin settings area offers you a number of configuration settings …
For example, you can choose a base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu. The default option is ’USD’ …
You can also choose which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, like FoxRate or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how frequently you want the exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, simply ignore this setting …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings according to your needs and remember to click Save Changes when you have finished configuring this page …
After your plugin settings have been configured, you can add currency conversion to any WordPress page using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WordPress posts, pages and widgets with no programming skills or knowledge using shortcodes.
Here are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WP posts and pages:
Let’s say that you sell an item for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below to your page content …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 22.00, 149.00, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks after being inserted into the page or post …
After publishing your page, the converted currency amount will then appear as shown in the example below …
Using this example, let’s also translate the same amount into different currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below now shows how the above shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once the page has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to select a different base currency than the one you have set as your default.
For example, if you have specified 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 …
The screenshot below now shows how the shortcode looks when inserted into a post …
After publishing the post, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), 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 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 field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by a forward slash as shown below …
If you enter another symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Software Integration
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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