Are you thinking about setting up an e-commerce web site or selling goods internationally? If so, then it’s a great idea to think about providing your prospects with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion tools let your site visitors have the price of a foreign currency transaction converted into their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets your visitors and customers see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their own local currency.
One great benefit of putting currency conversion on your website is that it allows visitors to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for visitors to work out their costs and expenses.
If you are a WordPress user, it’s easy and simple to add currency conversion using a plugin to currency conversion to WordPress using a plugin, allowing your customers to easily work out the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WordPress
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your site.
The Currencyr currency conversion WP plugin includes many great features like the following:
- Inline converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Widgetized currency table and converter
- Supports integration with a number of e-store plugins such as WooCommerce & Shopp.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Supports full 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. Ask your web hosting support team to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking the “Install Now” button …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin navigation menu …
The plugin settings screen offers you several configuration options …
For example, you can select your base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu. The default option is ’USD’ …
You can also specify 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 select another provider, such as FoxRate or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …
You can select how often you want to update the exchange rates by selecting 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 (e.g. WordPress plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the remainder of the settings to suit your own preferences and don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when done …
When you have finished configuring your settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page or post using widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, GBP, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can easily insert currency conversion into WordPress pages, posts and widgets with no coding skills or knowledge using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WP posts and pages:
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 show this conversion amount in British pounds (GBP) on your product sales page.
All you need to do is add the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 189.00, 1356.87, etc …)
The example below shows how the above shortcode should look when added to the page or post …
After publishing the information, your converted currency will then display as shown in the screenshot below …
Using the same example, let’s now convert the same price into different currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when inserted into a page …
Once your post or page has been published, the currency conversion will then display like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol within this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you want 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 e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode appears when added to your content …
After publishing the post, the converted currency amounts will then appear as you can see below …
Plugin Widget
You can also insert a currency converter into your site’s sidebar section using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, select Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add the currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by commas), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency converter will now show on your website’s sidebar with the options you have specified when configuring the widget …
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 several 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 shown below …
If you specify another symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With WP e-Commerce Platforms
As stated earlier, the Currencyr plugin integrates with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(above image sourced from plugin website)
And there you have it! Now you know how to 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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