Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce site or making goods and services available for sale worldwide? If so, then it’s a good idea to consider providing users with currency conversion.
Currency conversion lets your web visitors convert international currency transactions into their home currency when purchasing products online. 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 advantage of providing currency conversion is that it lets your customers see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is built with WordPress, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to your WordPress website, allowing your customers to easily calculate the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Currency Converter For WordPress
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!
This currency conversion WP plugin includes many features like:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports various exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Support database cache driven for fast response
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shop & Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Full language translation support
Note: The Currencyr plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you are running an older version of PHP on your server. Ask your web host to update your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress dashboard by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking the “Install Now” button …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings page by choosing Currencyr from your WP administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings area …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu. The default currency is (‘USD’) …
Similarly, you can select which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default provider is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, such as FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) will be required …
You can select how often you want the exchange rates to be updated 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 lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings and remember to click Save Changes when done …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily add currency conversion to any WP post using shortcodes and widgets.
Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, JPY, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Plugin Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts 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 your WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you retail an item on your site for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To display this information, just add the following shortcode into your page content …
Note: You can also display prices in dollars and cents (for example, 89.95, 79.45, 2499.99, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode looks when added to a product page …
Once your information has been published, your currency conversion will appear like this …
Using the same example, let’s now translate the same price into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when you add it to a post …
Once the information has been published, the currency conversion will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your website targeted to visitors from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The example below now shows how the above shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
Once the content has been published, the converted currency will then appear as shown below …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website’s sidebar area using a widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency converter will now display on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
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 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 prices with the forward slash as shown below …
If you choose another symbol and update your plugin settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Integration
As described earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image source: plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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