Presenting Product Prices in Multiple Currencies

An issue related to the display of currencies in Web sites that support multiple languages is the presentation of product prices in different currencies.

As with product text, one alternative is to extend the product catalog schema to allow for the storage of product prices in different properties, one per language. The advantage of this approach is that product prices can be presented in conventional, well-rounded amounts such as $4.95 or £9.99. If you adopt this approach, however, you will be offering your products at slightly different prices based on the language chosen by the user, and you will have the burden of maintaining multiple prices per product.

A different strategy involves storing product-pricing information in only one currency, known as the base currency. For example, you can store your prices in U.S. dollars or European euros, and then recalculate prices in other currencies, as needed. This calculation adjusts the price in the base catalog by the exchange rate. When your site displays a price, it calculates the price based on the exchange rate and displays it with the associated currency symbol and display format.

Virtual catalogs are also an option for providing alternate currency pricing. See the topic Virtual Catalogs for more information.

Important

• If you store search results and product detail pages in the CacheManager object, you must make the currency part of the cache key or you will retrieve the wrong results when you try to display pricing in a different currency. For more information, see Caching Programming Concepts.
• You may need to change the currency mode settings within the pipeline configurations to accommodate your choice of locale. More information can be found in the topics Currency Modes, Using the Pipeline Editor Property Pages, and Pipeline Properties.

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