Do you plan to sell products online worldwide? If so, then it’s a good idea to think about providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce website.
Currency conversion software tools allow your prospects to convert foreign currency transactions to their local currency at the purchase or checkout phase. It also lets customers view the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One benefit of providing currency conversion on your website is that it lets your customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add a currency converter to currency conversion to WordPress via a plugin, allowing your prospective customers to easily perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WP website.
This useful WP plugin includes practical features like:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatic local currency determination
- Support for language translations
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. Ask your web host to update your PHP server installation if needed.
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You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking “Install Now” …
After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WordPress admin user navigation menu …
The plugin settings area provides various configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a drop-down menu. The default option is (‘USD’) …
You can also choose which data provider you want to use from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose another provider, 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 specify how often you want to update the exchange rates by specifying 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 (such as WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, just ignore this setting …
Configure the rest of the settings to suit your own preferences and click Save Changes when you have finished configuring all the settings in this screen …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to WP blog’s posts using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, JPY, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Using Plugin Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets without editing 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 sell your products online for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
To do this, simply insert the shortcode below into your post or page …
Note: You can also add pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 22.00, 399.99, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how your shortcode looks when inserting it into a post or page …
After the post or page has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also translate the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode appears when you add it to your content …
After publishing the page, your converted currency amounts will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s say that you want to specify a different base currency than the one selected as your default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
Once the post has been published, the converted currency will then display like this …
Currencyr Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency converter tool will now show on your sidebar menu with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify the symbol to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts using a forward slash as shown below …
If you select another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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