Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or making goods or services available for sale globally? If so, then you may want to think about providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion software allows your prospective customers to have the price of an international currency amount translated into their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets visitors and customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion is that it lets your customers view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to your WP website or blog using a plugin, allowing your customers to quickly and easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converter – Currencyr
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. And, it’s also free to install and use on your site.
Useful plugin features include the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates and European Central Bank
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with various e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Shop and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Supports full language translations
Important: This plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Alternatively, ask your web hosting company to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr 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 selecting Currencyr from your WP dashboard area …
This takes you to the plugin settings page …
For example, you can select your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default base currency is (‘USD’) …
You can specify which data provider you want to use from the drop-down menu in the Provider section. The default provider 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’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can choose how often you would like to update the currency exchange rates by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The 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 WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to edit the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this section …
Edit the rest of the settings and don’t forget to click Save Changes when you have configured all of your settings …
After you have configured your settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to your WP blog’s posts or pages using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, ZAR, etc …) in this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to WP pages, posts and widgets without touching code using shortcodes.
Below are some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail your products on your website for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 189.00, 2499.99, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks after being added to your post or page …
After publishing the post, your currency conversion will appear like this …
Using this example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode below (add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when you add it to a post …
Once the post has been published, the converted currency will then appear as shown in the example below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to non-European visitors (for example, Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
Once your content has been published, your converted currency will then appear like this …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar area using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to save your settings …
Your currency conversion tool will now appear on your sidebar menu with the options you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings field.
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 modify the symbol and update your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Software
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your e-commerce site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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