Nowadays, business takes place online – yours, that of your partners, and your competition’s. Public websites are freely accessible and anyone can view them. However, we need advanced tools to create editable documents of online content (for reviews, analyses, translations). Tools that will save our time and money.

At Leemeta translation agency, we were looking – and we found – an online tool that will download the content of any website to your computer with just a few clicks.

The challenge: getting all the content in one location

We need the content of a website in a suitable digital format in order to translate it. A partner wanting to have their website translated and perhaps also localised faces a challenge: is it possible to get all the content in one location in an editable format?

Website translations belong to one of the most common jobs of translation agencies and freelance translators. IT experts also have great interest in online content – not so much for the purpose of translation but rather dealing with managing it and seeing what the competition is doing and how they are doing it. Manual copying and transferring are time-consuming and prone to error.

At Leemeta, we have therefore been looking for a new tool that would eliminate this time-consuming step and allow us to go straight to the added-value-creating step – to the translation of online content with editable documents.

WebsiteDownloader.com – only a few clicks to the content of a website

The choice is vast and recommendations from a reliable source are what counts whether it be a product, service, or an online tool. At Leemeta, we received a hint about a very useful online tool called WebsiteDownloader.com that could save us hours, days, or even weeks of work. We also wanted to test it.

We soon got an opportunity since a large client wanted to have their large website translated into German. There were some documents, however far from all, and we were not certain if they contained the final published versions. We decided to check if the online tool in question can help us.

Figure 1: The system apparently searches for pages within the domain and lists them, including the number of words. This is also useful for knowing how much text will need to be translated later. 

Leemeta’s user experience

WebsiteDownloader.com is a tool that is simple to use, first of all – no programming knowledge or advanced software is necessary. It lets you download the content of any public published website with jut a few clicks. The basic free plan is suitable for individuals and anyone who wants to test its functionalities without unnecessary cost. At Leemeta, we first chose the free plan to download the content of one website featuring 15 pages. This way, we downloaded files in formats that allowed for immediate translation. For serious work, though, we chose the Pro Plan that features the following:

• Downloads of up to 30 websites in the formats .docx, .txt, .html, .pdf, .xliff – as individual files or one joint file;
• The download of metadata;
• Included links in the text;
• Customer support.

We now use this new tool for all projects since we only need to enter the (URL) address and the copying is done automatically with the content quickly ready for importing into the CAT tool.

Figure 2: You can also download other files, such as PDF brochures or images as well as all SEO metadata. Specify whether you want all pages in one document or each page in its own, and even the language of the translation to be made when choosing the format for translation systems (.xliff). 

WebsiteDownloader.com can be quickly used for exports in various formats by anyone in the company, which additionally reduces the cost. In addition to the already mentioned functionalities, it can also download images into a special folder while removing any watermarks.

When downloading large websites, which takes a while, the download complete e-mail notification is highly welcome. When we do not want to download all pages, we simply mark that accordingly. The tool also allows word counts of individual pages. Our key account managers also love the access to the (often hidden) metadata. The copying of the content is anonymous – even when the online content of your competition finds a way to your computer, no one will know it.

The free version provided a testing opportunity to see if the tool was useful and suitable for us. We also checked out the web browser support. The responses were quick and also provided valuable information.

Online tools for an easier life

Leemeta loves to share brilliant online tools that make your life easier. This time, we found a new online assistant for downloading the content of websites. WebsiteDownloader.com will save you a lot of time since it does a very strenuous and time-consuming job for us. It prevents us from wasting time with searching for suitable files or manually copying online content since we can start translating websites with only a few clicks. It is a great tool for us and we are certain it will be a great tool for other translators as well as various online admins facing similar challenges. Technology is (possibly) the best thing happening to us now or in the future. We only need to know which one to choose and how to use it.