Are you planning to sell goods and services online to an online market? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce web site.
Currency conversion software tools let your prospects convert international currency prices into their local currency at the point of sale. It also allows your customers to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your website is that it allows your customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s really simple to add currency conversion via a plugin to currency conversion to your WordPress web site via a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to quickly work out the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converter For WordPress
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. And, it’s completely free!
The Currencyr currency conversion plugin includes many features like the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Translation support
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires 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 webhosting provider to update your PHP.
***
You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select a base currency from a drop-down menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option (USD) …
You can select which data provider you want to use from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose another option, such as European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, you will need to obtain an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can choose how often you would like the currency exchange rates to update by specifying an option from the Update Rates dropdown 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 (like WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the rest of the settings to suit your needs and remember to click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can start adding currency conversion to WP posts and pages using shortcodes.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP pages, posts and widgets without having to mess with code 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 retail a product for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 22.00, 295.75, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks after being inserted into the product page …
After publishing your post or page, the currency conversion will appear as you can see in the screenshot below …
Using this example, let’s also convert the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a page …
Once your content has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, suppose you want to use a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to non-European customers (like Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a page …
After publishing the page or post, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add any currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now show on the sidebar menu with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol 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 the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you select another symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
WP E-Commerce
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! 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:
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com