How to add WooCommerce currency switcher

Currency Switcher is one of the important features that you will need if you are using WordPress and having a WooCommerce store that sells things internationally. Although people love seeing things at the price of USD, not all people are like that. There are many people out there who don’t want to see the pricing in the USD but they want to see it in their currency. This is where you will need to use a currency switcher. This will make sure that all the customers are completely satisfied.

You can’t directly change the currency if you have an audience from all the parts of the countries. If you change the USD to pound, there will be many US visitors who will not buy from you. They simply ignore it because there is no option to convert the price. Not everyone has enough time to calculate all the product item’s price and see if it’s affordable for them or not. Therefore, they will simply head over to the other website and buy from there instead of buying from you. Therefore, if you want to make more sales, you will have to make the pricing for all of them. In simpler words, the pricing should be easily convertible from USD to any other currency. That’s where the currency switcher comes into the picture.

What is Currency Switcher?

Currency switcher is a feature by which you can offer easy currency conversion from one currency to any other. If you are selling an item worldwide, you might have visitors from the US as well as from the UK. In this case, you will have to display the pricing in the US dollar as well as you will have to display it in the British pound. Therefore, you will need to have an option by which the person can easily convert the currency.

The currency switcher is the same thing. With the help of this, you can easily convert the currency to your desired option. Here, you are the customer. In simpler words, the customer will see an option to convert the price from USD to their designer currency.

The currency conversion is done automatically and is done in real-time. Therefore, you won’t face any loss when they convert the currency. This is the easiest way using which you can convert the currency.

There are many other options you will get here such as you can add the flag of a country when the user wants to switch the currency. In the same way, there are a lot of other options you can get here.

Of course, the number of options you will get completely depends on the plugin you are using. If you are using a reputed plugin, you will get all the possible options whereas if you are using a free plugin, there will be fewer options. Therefore, depending on your requirement, you can choose the one that is best for you.

From where the Data is Taken?

One of the biggest questions that people have is from where the data is taken. If you know, the price of the currency is changing daily.

So, the real problem is from where do you get the data? Some people are thinking that they will have to enter all the data on their own which is just not true. You don’t need to enter the data and even if you want, you can’t do it. You will have to fetch the data.

Don’t worry, many currency conversion portals allow you to use their data on your website.  Most of them are free and will allow you to use the data directly. However, not all of them are free. So, in some cases, you will have to pay.

The next question is how you will get the data. You will get the API from them and the plugin which we will use is where you need to enter the API details. When you enter the details, the plugin will do the rest of the things. This is the way on how you can fetch the details.

The currency rate can be fetched every hour, every day, or you can even fetch it in real-time when the person wants to see it. This is the way they will get the real-time rate of the currency. Now, there are some of the things that will depend on the plugin. So, for that, we will directly jump into the plugin section and see the rest of the details.

Currency Switcher Plugin

We will first talk about the premium plugin that we have. There is a plugin available in the official directory of WooCommerce. That plugin is the best one you can get.

We will see more about this plugin before we can see the tutorial of the same.

The currency switcher plugin is the ultimate plugin that you can have if you are looking for a plugin that can allow the users to change the currency options. Here, you will get all the options that you probably might be looking for.

The installation will hardly take few seconds and you can do the configuration as well. In this way, you can easily set the currency switcher on your WooCommerce website. We will see the complete tutorial on how easily you can do it. Before that, we will have a quick look at the features of this plugin.

Please note that this is a paid plugin. So, if you want to activate this on your website, you will have to pay a small fee. Only after that, you will be able to activate the plugin. So, without wasting more time, we will now focus on the features.

Features

These are some of the most popular features that you will get here:

• Currency selection made easy. Customers can easily select the currency option they want from the drop-down directly without worrying about anything.

• It allows you to set an icon for each currency. You can easily set a map for the desired currency. For example, you can set the US map if it’s the USD. In this same way, if it’s the pound, you can always set the British map. In this way, it will be easier for the customer to choose their currency.
• You can hide the payment gateway depending on the currency. You may have many payment gateways. Now, some of them might not allow payments from a specific currency or a specific country. In this case, you can simply disable them.
• The price will automatically change based on the customer’s location. The location is based on the IP address.
• Customer can checkout using their default currency.
• Now, if you have the payment method that only supports one currency but you want to shoe the price to the customer in their currency, you can do that too. There is an option by which the price is converted to the default currency at the time of checkout. So, when the customer reaches checkout, it will be in the default currency only.
• You can insert the shortcode anywhere you want/
• Currency conversion is a big problem. You can select various APIs from which you can fetch the data

• The data can be fetched in real-time, hourly, weekly, or if you want, you can also update it daily or monthly. This is surely your choice. You can select the time interval in which you want to update the price. This is the time when the currency price will be updated.

The Free Alternative

We always try to see if there is anything available for free that you can use. Well, not all the people who read this can afford to go with the paid one, right? So, there should be an option using one which you can get for free.

The free plugin is called “currency switcher for WooCommerce”. The features are different from the main plugin that we saw but if you are running tight on budget, you can surely go with this plugin. This will allow you to use any of the currency directly.

Just like the previous plugin, the customer can select their currency from the list given. You can simply include or exclude any particular currency you want. So, you are in full control. Once you are ready with the setup, you can surely configure the plugin as per your wish. There are various types available here. In simpler words, you can either display the currency switcher option as a drop-down menu or you can display them as a list. This is surely your choice on how you want to go. Once you are ready with it, you can surely save the changes and things are done for you. Now, if you are thinking about all the features you are going to get then we are here to our next section where we will see the features of this plugin.

Features

Here are some of the features that are worth keeping in your mind. All these are available in the free plugin

• You can easily display all the details of the currency in the list or you can also display it in the dropdown menu. This is surely your choice on how you want to display the data.
• The plugin allows you to automatically change the currency based on real-time. So, you will not have to waste your time here.
• You can either set the default currency based on the IP address or you can also set it based on the location. This depends on you. You can use any of them as per your choice.
• It allows you to use the billing and shipping options. In simple words, you can either show the currency based on the billing country or you can also show the currency based on the shipping country. Both of these are things that are allowed here. So, that’s another great feature you will get here.
• You will get all the basic features such as you can change the order of the displayed currency and similar stuff.
• You can also set the widget or shortcode as per your wish.
• If you want to set the currency to the default currency at the time of the checkout, you can easily do that. There are options to do this too.
• There are enough shortcodes that will make your work easier.

Configuring the Plugin

You can easily configure the plugin with the help of the options given. You can go to the WooCommerce and then got the settings. In the settings, you will see the currency option from where you can make all the changes in the plugin.

You can easily make plenty of changes here. For example, you can select the API from which you want to get the data. There will be some options for you to select, you can select the one that is most applicable for you. Further, you can select whether the switcher will be displayed as a drop-down or the users will see it as a list. You can also set an icon for each currency. If you do that, each currency will have its icon. Usually, it’s the flag of the country. So, you can keep this for every currency.

Please note that in the free plugin, you will have to do this by shortcode or widget. You will find the code and more information about it on the plugin page itself. So, make sure you check it if you want to play around with your plugin.

Final Words

To conclude, this is all about currency switcher. If you are selling worldwide, you should surely have a currency switcher. This will allow you to increase your sales as well as your customers can have the best experience here. Therefore, you can surely try the free plugin if you don’t have the budget to go with the paid ones. The free plugin usually does the work and you will not face more issues.