I recently have been asked to integrate a real-time Forex exchange prices widget to a financial website, there are quiet a lot of options out there, my aim was to get something that loads up asynchronously and quickly, while also ensuring that the widget itself is customizable in terms of look & feel, in order to fit the site’s stylings.

Ensuring that a widget runs asynchronously without any disruption to user’s online experience is crucial, not just from a usability perspective, but also search engines tend to prefer to return sites with pages that loads fast, its part of the search engine’s job to ensure that the results being returned will satisfy the user’s query in a prompt manner. One reason to switch from the basic GoDaddy hosting package this blog is running on!

Anyway, so back to the list of financial widgets. Here are some price tickers that satisfy the following three criteria:

• Asynchronous live Forex price ticker
• Customizable to fit any site’s look & feel
• Looks supported (will not go down tomorrow)

So here is my top 3 live ticker widgets in descending order.

#1: ForexTrading’s Real-time Forex Quotes

ForexTrading.com is a subsidiary of Saxo Bank, which if you ever dealt with multi-instrument trading, and do not get overwhelmed by the number of trading options you have, Saxo Bank is the platform for you.

I do particularly like this widget because it has the option of a price alert, basically it allows your users to setup a filter, and whenever the filter is triggered, an alert email is sent to the user.

The chart they have is also nice and has many options, such as adding trend-lines, zooming in and out, etc.

Price: free to add to your website, although the deployment code as is does have a backlink to the ForexTrading site

#2: Etoro’s Live Currency Rates Forex Widget

Etoro (also an online Forex broker), has a currency exchange rates widget, which is slimmer than the ForexTrading one, and displays less data, but it is very good if you are looking for a non-disruptive ticker, which can easily integrate into a side bar.

One of the cool features of this ticker is that its done in JS, and does not use Java (unlike the ForexTrading widget), and so it does not come up with an annoying “Would u like to enable Java for this webpage” warning in some browsers.

Price: free to add to your website, although the deployment code as is does have 3 backlinks to the Etoro site

Etoro also has a bunch of other tickers and charting widgets worth taking a look at.

#3: FCXM’s Forex Rates Widget

FXCM widgets load quickly and are also done using JS, which requires no using prompted warning.

They are pretty compact widgets, and so site placement won’t be too obstructive, but again they lack features and the “edge” that the ForexTrading (Saxo Bank) widgets have.

What makes FCXM a good choice is the fact that it supports multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew and multiple European languages.

Price: Requires registration

Now of course I was just being lazy and taking the easy way out, the proper way to approach this is to develop your own widget that has the exact features you are looking for, using an API (preferably a paid one, such as Xiginite) to bring the data through.