As a leading WordPress site owner, have you considered adding an animated progress bar to visually engage visitors and encourage participation?
Progress bars grab attention and create urgency better than plain text updates. That‘s why top companies use them to drive progress towards donation goals, project milestones, weight loss tracking, and more.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share insider techniques used by top WordPress experts for adding high-converting progress bars tailored to your site goals.
5 Use Cases That Benefit from Progress Bars
Here are the most common scenarios where progress bars can boost metrics:
1. Fundraising Campaigns
Progress bars with real-time donation metrics encourage supporters to give by displaying how close you are to your public goal. Studies show progress-based fundraising pages raise 53% more than those without goal thermometers.
2. Kickstarter Campaigns
Popular sites like Kickstarter use progress bars to indicate how close new crowdfunding projects are towards getting successfully funded during their fixed deadline period. This taps into our innate desire to be part of achieving collective goals.
3. Health and Fitness Goals
For health sites, progress bars are perfect for showing users their improvement towards fitness objectives or weight loss goals. Seeing steady progress acts as positive reinforcement.
4. Project Management
Developers, agencies, and remote teams can post progress bars to closely track completion % of ongoing projects. This keeps stakeholders engaged and informed.
5. Quiz and Survey Completion
E-learning platforms leverage progress bars below quizzes or lengthy surveys to display users‘ progress, reducing drop-off rates.
As you can see, progress bars have diverse use cases and are proven to boost engagement across industries when implemented correctly.
Now let‘s get into the technical details…
How to Quickly Add Animated Progress Bars in WordPress
While you can code progress bars from scratch, the easiest way to add them in WordPress is using a dedicated plugin.
My top recommendation is the WordPress Progress Bar plugin. It lets you generate progress bars using shortcodes with tons of customizations. Over 200,000+ sites already use this free, well-supported plugin.
Here is an overview of how it works:
- Install the plugin and activate on your WordPress site.
- Place a shortcode like
[wppb progress=75]where you want the progress bar to display. - Customize the design, text, animation using shortcode parameters.
Let‘s explore some examples of customizing progress bar shortcodes…
Display Percentage or Monetary Progress
Show % completion or fundraising progress. Ideal for donation thermometers:
[wppb progress="$3500 raised of $5000 target" color="blue"] 
Animate Progress Bar
Animate it to stand out with candy stripe or standard animation:
[wppb progress=25 option="animated-candystripe" color="#56AC35" ]
Add Custom Text Label
Include a label for clarity using the text parameter:
[wppb progress=50 text="Current Fundraising Progress"]Additional Customizations
There are dozens of other customizations you can add through shortcode attributes like:
- Progress bar height
- Custom colors
- Flat vs glossy style
- Text location
- Progress bar position
- And more…
Refer to the progress bar plugin documentation for details on each option.
Progress Bar Plugin Alternatives
While I recommend the WordPress Progress Bar plugin as the best all-around option, here are a few other alternatives with niche uses:
| Plugin | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Progress Bar by MyThemeShop | More design options | Paid |
| Easy Progress Bar | Lightweight | Less features |
| Progress Map | Animated SVG paths | Only shows set route |
So in summary, I still firmly believe the WordPress Progress Bar plugin strikes the right balance of customization options, ease of use, great support and 5-star reviews from the WordPress community.
Next Steps → Start Adding Progress Bars
Now you know why top sites rely on progress bars as well as expert techniques for adding them tailored to your own content strategy.
For fundraising campaigns, add a progress bar displaying the percentage raised towards a published target amount. Updating it periodically encourages social proof as followers see other people donating towards common goals.
For multi-part content like courses or elongated processes, break up progress bar into distinct milestone markers, allowing users to track completion across an extended period.
Test different progress bar placements on sidebars, in-content, headers, etc and tweak animations/colors until you find the one that best fits aesthetically while attracting click-throughs.
Once implemented, monitor your analytics to compare visitor engagement metrics before vs after adding progress bars across your site.
I hope this guide gave you ideas and easy instructions for adding progress bars to boost conversions. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!
