Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or selling goods worldwide? If so, you may want to consider providing your potential customers with currency conversion.
Currency conversion lets your prospects have the cost of a foreign currency amount converted to their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets your visitors and customers see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their own home currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion to your website is that it lets customers view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s really simple to add a currency conversion plugin to WordPress, allowing your customers to quickly and easily calculate the cost of your goods.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your web site.
The Currencyr currency conversion plugin includes many features like the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with a number of online shopping plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Translation support
Note: 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 hosting company to update your PHP.
***
You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration area …
The plugin settings area provides several configuration options …
For example, you can select a base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu if you prefer something other than the default option ‘USD’ …
Similarly, you can specify which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the Provider section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also 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) will be required …
You can choose 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 is an open-source library of Javascript code that allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this section …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
Once you have finished configuring your settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WordPress blog’s posts using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to posts, pages and widgets without having to edit your web templates 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 are selling an item on your site for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, you will need to insert the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also add prices in dollars and cents (for example, 89.95, 197.00, 400.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode will look after you have inserted it into your page …
After the content has been published, your currency conversion will appear as you can see below …
Using the same example, let’s also convert the same amount into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (you can add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to your content …
After publishing your content, your currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European customers (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
Once your page or post has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your site’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress 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 currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on your website’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful 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 select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts with the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you modify this symbol and resave your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shopp and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org