Are you planning to sell any products online globally? If so, then here’s a good idea: consider providing your prospects with a currency conversion tool.
Currency conversion lets your site visitors convert international currency prices into their local currency at the purchase or checkout stage. It also lets your customers see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One benefit of providing currency conversion is that it allows visitors to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is built with WordPress, it’s easy and simple to add a currency conversion plugin to currency conversion to WordPress using a plugin, allowing your site visitors to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your products.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converting Tool For WP Web Sites
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free to install and use on your website.
Some of the features of this plugin include the following:
- Inline conversion tool
- Supports several exchange rates providers, like Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
- Supports Shortcodes
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of online store plugins such as WooCommerce and Shopp.
- Can detect local currency automatically
- Supports full language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin requires PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Alternatively, ask your web hosting company to check and upgrade your PHP server installation.
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You can install the Currencyr plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings section by choosing Currencyr from your administration menu …
The plugin settings screen provides several configuration options …
For example, you can choose your base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu if you want a different currency than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
You can also choose a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default selection is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose another provider, such as 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 specify how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the ‘Update Rates’ drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (such as WP plugins).
Unless you have a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Edit the rest of the settings according to your own preferences and click Save Changes when done …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily add currency conversion to any WordPress post 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, NZD, ZAR, etc …) with this plugin.
Currencyr Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into WP posts, pages and widgets with no technical skills 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 on your site for a fixed amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to show your amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (e.g. 165.49, 47.00, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode looks after you have inserted it into a product page …
After publishing your post or page, your converted currency amount will display like this …
Using the same example, let’s also display the same amount into multiple currency formats.
To do this, use the shortcode below (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
After publishing the post or page, the converted currency will then appear like this …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol in this plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to use 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 website targeted to non-European visitors (e.g. Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode appears when added to a page …
Once your page has been published, the converted currency amounts will then display as you can see below …
Using The Widget
You can also add currency conversion to your website or blog’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress dashboard menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget settings as shown below (add any currency codes you would like displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now appear on your sidebar with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional 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 select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings section.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your prices using a forward slash as shown below …
If you select another symbol and resave your settings …
Your site visitors will see the new symbol being used as the currency separator …
E-Commerce Platform Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin can be integrated with a number of WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Shopp …
(image source: Currencyr plugin website)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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