How to Display Estimated Post Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts

It is important to keep your readers engaged and encourage them to scroll through your content. One good way to do this is to display the estimated reading time for your WordPress blog posts.

When readers see the estimated reading time for an article, they are more likely to commit to reading the entire post. This can increase the likelihood that they will stay on your website longer, boosting overall user engagement and satisfaction.

At WPBeginner, we have written over 3000 blog posts, and in our experience, strategies like displaying reading time or progress bars give readers the confidence to finish reading an article.

In this article, we will show you how to easily display the estimated reading time for your WordPress posts to keep your audience engaged and connected.

Why Add Estimated Post Reading Time in WordPress Posts?

When you start a new blog, your primary focus is on getting more visitors to your website. However, you also need to increase the time each user spends on your website.

When visitors stay on your website longer, they are more likely to remember your brand, sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase, and visit again in the future. It also helps boost your SEO.

This is why several popular websites show a reading progress bar as users scroll down a post.

Another way to encourage visitors to read your posts is to tell them in advance how much time it will take. Telling them that it will only take a few minutes to read the article can help them make a start.

That said, let’s take a look at how to easily display reading time in your WordPress blog post. We’ll show you two methods, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the one you want to use:

Method 1: Displaying Estimated Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts With a Code Snippet (Recommended)

You can quickly display estimated reading time in your WordPress posts using WPCode, a free code snippets plugin.

WPCode allows you to add custom code in WordPress without touching your theme’s functions.php file, which makes it safer and easier to do website customizations.

It comes with a built-in library of useful code snippets for popular feature requests like display reading time, add ‘new’ badge for recent posts, disable Gravatar avatars, display progress bar, and more. This eliminates the need to install a bunch of single-use plugins.

To get started, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. If you need help, then see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for instructions.

Once the plugin is activated, go to Code Snippets » Library from the WordPress dashboard.

From the Snippets Library page, search for the ‘Display Reading Time’ snippet. Once you find it, hover over it and click the ‘Use snippet’ button.

On the next page, you’ll see that WPCode has automatically added the code.

It also will set the proper insertion method to display the estimated reading time before your content.

Now, all you need to do is toggle the switch from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’ and then hit the ‘Update’ button.

That’s it. You can visit your WordPress site and see the estimated reading time displayed on your posts.

Method 2: Displaying Estimated Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts With a Plugin

If you don’t want to add any other customizations to your website with a code snippet plugin, you can show estimated reading time by using the Read Meter plugin.

Read Meter is a free WordPress plugin that helps you show the reading time and progress bar on your website. It also comes with built-in settings that you can use to edit the appearance of the reading time notification without touching any code.

First, you will need to install and activate the Read Meter plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » Read Meter page from your WordPress dashboard to configure the plugin settings.

In the ‘General Settings’ tab, you can select the post types to show the reading time on.

For instance, the plugin lets you display the reading time on your blog posts and pages. If you have an online store, then there will also be an option to do this on your product pages.

You can also adjust the average reading speed. By default, the plugin calculates reading time by estimating 275 words per minute reading speed.

There is also an option to include comments and images when estimating the time it will take to read the blog post.

Next, you can head over to the ‘Read Time’ tab to customize the exact text that will appear.

At the top, the plugin lets you choose whether to show the read time on blog posts, your home page, and your archive pages.

Besides that, you can change the appearance of the reading time notification.

There are settings for the font size, position of the read time, background color, text color, and a lot more.

When you have made the changes, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button.

After that, you can go to the ‘Progress Bar’ tab and edit the settings. You will see options to select the position of the bar (top or bottom of the page) or completely disable it from your WordPress site.

You can also change its style, background color, primary color, and bar thickness.

After editing your progress bar settings, go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button. Now, your readers will see the estimated reading time on each post.

You can now visit your WordPress website to see the reading time and a progress bar in action.

Expert Guides on Improving the WordPress Reading Experience

We hope this article helped you learn how to display estimated post reading time in your WordPress posts. You may also want to see some other guides related to improving the reading experience in WordPress:

• How to Add a Reading Progress Bar in WordPress Posts
• How to Add and Improve Readability Score in WordPress Posts
• How to Add Text to Speech in WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Track User Engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics
• How to Add WordPress Reaction Buttons to Boost Engagement
• How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples)
• How to Show Personalized Content to Different Users in WordPress
• How to Understand WordPress Website Visitors Intent
• Is Blogging Dead? (Our Expert Opinion)

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