It was important that our customers were apart of the announcement of the redesign and that they had a preview of what the product would look like before we released it.
We released an introductory video the day before we deployed the changes and this was ideal. Most customers were very excited to get started with the new version. We also chose our least active day to deploy the new version, so that we could work out any unexpected errors and to allow for a more low key day for our users to get acquainted with the new interface.
Here is our announcement the day before we deployed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hT6A4HX2WM&t=40s