Are you planning to sell any products online worldwide? If so, then here’s a great idea: consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency converting tools let your web visitors have the cost of an international currency amount converted into their home currency when checking out products online. It also lets your customers see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own home currency.
The obvious benefit of putting currency conversion is that it lets customers view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add a currency conversion plugin to WordPress, allowing your visitors to quickly and easily determine the cost of your products.
WordPress Free Currency Converting Plugin – Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your WP website or blog.
Some of the features of this plugin include the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Google, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various e-store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatic local currency detection
- Full support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running 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 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 section and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can visit the plugin’s settings page by choosing Currencyr from your admin user navigation menu …
The plugin settings page provides a number of configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency dropdown menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option ’US Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can specify a data provider from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default option is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can also select 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 select how often you want to update the exchange rates by specifying an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to change the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own preferences and remember to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you have configured all the settings in this screen …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WP page or post using a shortcode.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WP pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge 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 goods on your website for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to show your conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, you will need to insert the following shortcode to your post or page …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 79.45, 149.00, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks once you have added it to a page …
Once your post has been published, the converted currency amount will appear like this …
Using this example, let’s also translate the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you like separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when inserted into a post …
Once your post or page has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol within the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want to use a different base currency than the one you have selected as the default.
For example, if you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to non-European customers (for example, Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when added to your content …
After publishing the post or page, your converted currency will then display as shown below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar area using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets location …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the example below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using multiple currencies.
You can change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you choose another symbol and resave your settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and 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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