Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce website or making goods available for sale worldwide? If so, then it’s a good idea to think about providing users with currency conversion.
Currency conversion lets your site visitors have the price of a foreign currency amount converted to their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets your visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One benefit of adding currency conversion is that it allows customers to view and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, you can add currency conversion via a plugin to currency conversion to your WordPress site using a plugin, allowing your site visitors to easily understand the cost of your products.
Currencyr – WP Currency Converter
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free!
Plugin features include:
- In-line converter
- Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Open Exchange Rates & FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with various online store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Can determine local currency automatically
- Supports full language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Ask your web host to check and upgrade your PHP.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WordPress dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins screen and clicking the “Install Now” button …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your dashboard navigation menu …
The plugin settings section provides many configuration settings …
For example, you can choose your base currency from a dropdown menu if you want a different currency than the default option ’USD’ …
You can also choose which data provider you want to use from a drop-down menu. 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) will be required …
You can choose how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to change the jQuery settings, leave them as they are …
Configure the remainder of the plugin settings to suit your own preferences and don’t forget to click Save Changes when done …
When your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to WordPress pages using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, JPY, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
Using Plugin Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP 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 pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell a product for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would also like to display this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To display this information, you simply need to add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also display amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 188.35, 79.45, 400.00, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode looks once you have inserted it into a page …
After publishing your page, the converted currency will display like this …
Using the above example, let’s also convert the same price into multiple currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when you add it to your content …
Once your content has been published, your currency conversion will then appear like this …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to specify a different base currency than the one you have set as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers in countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode looks when you add it to a page …
Once the content has been published, your currency conversion will then display like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your website’s sidebar section using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the example below (add the currency codes you would like to display on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to update your settings …
The currency converter will now appear on your website’s sidebar menu with the settings you have selected …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr 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 change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts with a forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you select another symbol and resave your plugin settings …
Your web site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Software
As mentioned earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopp and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress web site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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