How To Display A Reading Time Progress Bar In WordPress Blog Posts

Do you want to show how long it takes to read your WordPress blog posts?

If you are a blogger or an article writer, you may be interested in learning how to add estimated post reading time for your WordPress blog posts in order to interact with your readers more effectively, similar to how to engage more effectively by displaying a scrolling progress bar.

We'll show you how to easily add estimated post reading time to your WordPress posts in this article.

Importance of Showing Estimated Post Reading Time for Your WordPress Blog

The duration of blog entries varies. In reality, they can range from a few words to hundreds of words.

A post's average length is 1142 words. However, it might range from 500 to more than 7000 words. As a result, there is a probability that your visitors may leave your blog post since the length of your blog is too long. This increases the bounce rate.

By displaying the expected post reading time, you may convey to your visitors that your contents are brief, making your material more intuitive and your website more user-friendly.

You may also manually calculate the anticipated post reading time and display it on your blog post. However, this is a bad idea since you will have to do it for each and every post you publish.

But what is a reader's typical reading speed? So, here's a fact:

Mental readers typically read at a rate of about 250 words per minute. Auditory readers read at a rate of about 450 words per minute. Visual readers "read"[clarification required] at a rate of about 700 words per minute. Proficient readers can read at speeds ranging from 280 to 310 words per minute without losing comprehension. - Wikipedia

Typically, visitors attempt to read the entire article at first sight in order to glean as much information as possible from the post. Users are encouraged to read the message if the reading duration is stated in minutes.

The reader's location on the post will be shown by a handy progress indicator. The progress bar represents the remaining portion of the post as the reader scrolls down the page. This informs readers of how far they have progressed and how much further they have to go - A nice addition for your Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).

Having stated that, let's look at how to quickly display reading time in your WordPress blog article.

Adding Estimated Post Reading Time in WordPress: Read Meter – Reading Time & Progress Bar

The Read Meter plugin is the simplest method to add estimated post-reading time. It's a free WordPress plugin that allows you to display the reading time and progress bar on your blog.

You must first install and activate the Read Meter plugin.

See our step-by-step tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin for additional information. After activating the plugin, navigate to the Settings > Read Meter page in your WordPress admin panel to adjust the plugin settings.

You can specify which post types to display the reading time on under the 'General Settings' tab. For example, if you run an online store, you can use the plugin to display the reading time on your blog articles, pages, and goods. You may also change the speed of the reading. By default, the plugin calculates reading time by assuming a reading speed of 275 words per minute.

There is also the option to incorporate comments and photographs when calculating how long it will take to read the blog post.

Then, go to the 'Read Time' option to modify the precise wording that will show.

The plugin enables you select whether to display the read time on blog articles, your home page, and archive pages at the top.

Aside from that, you may alter the read time position, update the content, change the font, size, margins, background colour, text colour, and much more.

When you've finished making your changes, don't forget to hit the 'Save' button.

After that, navigate to the 'Progress Bar' tab and make changes to the settings. There are options to change the location of the bar or to remove it entirely from your WordPress website.

You may also alter the bar's design, background colour, primary colour, and thickness. After you've finished customising your progress bar, click the 'Save' button.

You may now view the reading time and a progress metre on your website.

Some Alternative Plugins For Progress Bars

There are other different plugins that you may use to do the same thing. As a result, I decided to present the top three alternative plugins in this post. The good thing is that all of them have some additional features in addition to reading time. So, let's have a look at them: Swift Bar is a lightweight and well built plugin that adds a sticky bar to the bottom of your articles. It not only displays the time to read, but it also includes social sharing icons and a progress indicator. You can, of course, turn off the ones you don't like. Simply go to the settings page and turn off the things you don't want. Worth The Read The plugin adds a progress bar that shows how far the user has progressed on the page. From the settings page, you may change the position of the progress bar. You may also choose whether you want it to appear on your posts, pages, or homepage. You may also use this plugin to add read time to your sites. You may activate this feature and choose where it should appear on the page. WP Reading Time is a premium plugin created by the MyThemeShop Team. Though I do not encourage using a paid plugin for this functionality, you may use this plugin if you have an extended MyThemeShop membership or plan to acquire one. WP Time to Read is similar to the Worth The Read plugin. You may include a timer and a progress bar in your postings. In addition, via the settings page, you may alter the colour of the progress bar.

Code Your Own Progress Bar:

Obviously, there is the other route to take and to gain more control over your requirements. Coding your own progress bar is also a great option. However, it does require some additional knowledge/experience. We hope you found this article helpful in learning how to display estimated post reading time in WordPress articles. You might be interested in our list of essential WordPress plugins for your website.